


(When I Am King You Will Be) First Against the Wall

by interstellar (perihadion)



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, POV First Person, POV Lois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-18
Updated: 2008-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/interstellar
Summary: An old foe, and a stranger with the face of a friend. Can Lois Lane save the world?
Relationships: Clark Kent & Chloe Sullivan, Clark Kent & Jor-El, Clark Kent & Kara Zor-El, Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Jor-El & Lois Lane, Lois Lane & Chloe Sullivan, Lois Lane & James "Jimmy" Olsen, Lois Lane & Kara Zor-El, Lois Lane & Lex Luthor, Lois Lane & Perry White, Lois Lane & Sam Lane, implied James "Jimmy" Olsen/Kara Zor-El, past James "Jimmy" Olsen/Chloe Sullivan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Perry White

**Author's Note:**

> Nominated under "Best Lois-centric" in the 2009 _Smallville_ Fanfic Awards.

Everything changed when I first met Perry White. The rumours had rustled through the newsroom like the first waves of the oncoming storm when Pauline Khan resigned as Editor in Chief of the Daily Planet. But still I caught Jimmy Olsen’s eye across the bullpen the day we knew who would replace her, and each knew that the other was thinking of a third.

“I wonder,” he said to me, as we watched Perry enter the room for the first time our superior, “what she would say about this.” That was the first time he had opened a conversation on my wayward cousin, and I knew then that the wounds were starting to heal. But I didn’t answer him straight away. I was following Perry with my eye as he stalked through the newsroom and wondering – if I could peel back the legend – what kind of man he would turn out to be. He stopped as he reached the door to his office, as if he heard me weighing him up in my mind, and half-turned, just glared over his shoulder at me with all the gravity I could ask of our new commander. And I had a glimpse, in that moment, of all the glory he would bring us.

“She would tell you to take a better picture if you want to see it on the front page,” I said, pushing myself up from the desk I was leaning against.

“No she wouldn’t.” It was no reproach against me. When I looked back he had that wistful smile – and he was right: I didn’t know Chloe as well as I once thought. “Heads up,” he nodded over my shoulder.

The great mass of Perry White was approaching again – not massive in a physical sense, but in the pull he exerted on all of us even now. All heads were turned his way as he walked up to Jimmy and I, and said: “Lane.”

“White,” I replied, and Jimmy had the sense to melt into the background.

“A word,” he said, in that terse, heavy tone, indicating his office. And for a moment I believed that he might have just a single word for me – one word sated in meaning, one word to establish a fact that would take another person twelve to convey – because that was his skill.

“Hey, Lane!” someone shouted from the back of the room, “Two minutes and you already pissed him off? That’s gotta be a record even for you.” Perry glowered around the newsroom, following the ripple of laughter and stifling it. I let my gaze chase his, observing each face with my own self-superior smirk. Some of the smiles were good-natured; many sat smugly on the faces of people who, I knew, would like nothing better than to twist the knife.

“Are you kidding?” I said, to the room in general, “I’m slipping.” Because that was my skill.

Perry was already halfway across the bullpen before any of us noticed that he was walking. I smiled to myself, uncrossed my arms and followed him to his office. He was leaning back against his desk in the way that I had leant back against mine, arms crossed and looking right into me the way I had looked right into him. “How long," he said, as I closed the door, "have you been a reporter?”

I raised an eyebrow, “Two years.”

He nodded. “And how much of that time have you spent working at the Daily Planet?”

“One year.”

Again he nodded. “That’s right. You pushed Lex Luthor down to propel yourself up from basement level – and you took your photographer with you. You don’t see that every day, Lane.” I nodded, and ran my tongue around my teeth. He was talking about the story which gave me my wings as a reporter earlier that year, when, after months of work, I had finally gathered the evidence to break Luthorcorp’s experimentation on patients at the Belle Reve mental institute to the world.

If Perry had laughed with the others, I might have fronted my way through the whole meeting with the same kind of bravado that rival reporter and evil mastermind received alike. But he hadn’t, and I felt obliged to be frank: “Anyone with a lead could have broken that story.”

He looked down at his crossed arms, and then back at me, and his eyes bored right through me. “Do you really believe that most would?” A year earlier I would have believed any reporter would have chased that lead down to its source. I never believed that journalists were all crusading for the common good, but I did believe that most would break a story like that for the personal glory. Then it came out that Chloe had known all along and never gone after the evidence, and for a while I didn’t know what to believe.

Perry uncrossed his arms and pushed himself forward onto the soles of his feet. Crossing over to the window, he looked out over the Metropolitan skyline. Silhouetted there against the shining blue sky, I could believe that this was the man they had once called 'the Bulldog' – maybe the only person in the building who could lead me by example. “The Daily Planet is the oldest and most respected paper in Metropolis,” he said, “people from all over the globe rely on us to bring them news in an objective and accurate fashion.”

If I wasn't careful he would start quoting statistics at me – circulation figures, page hits for the Daily Planet website – and I was itching to get back into the newsroom already. “Is there a point to this?” I asked, putting my hand on my hip, “Chief?”

“Don’t call me ‘Chief’, Lane.” He was gruff, but I knew reporters, and I got the sense that Perry White's bark was worse than his bite. "The point is," he said, "we have to report the news in an objective manner – like we're expected."

I walked over to the window to join him, crossing my arms and looking sidelong at him. He caught my eye, and we shared that first moment of solidarity: a mutual understanding. "And you don't think that's happening," I said, and quietly I agreed.

"Lex Luthor's incarceration has created a power vacuum while Luthorcorp regroups," he said, "this is our chance to shake off the corruption which has been taking place behind closed doors."

Because although the Daily Planet was the oldest and most respected paper in Metropolis, there were ways in which it was no better than the Metropolis Inquisitor, or the Daily Star. We all knew it, and we knew it wasn't just Luthor: some of the more jaded reporters, those who had laughed with malice in their eyes, even embraced it. The rest of us seethed with the knowledge that our paper was just like the rest of Metropolis, and even I had days where I couldn't struggle against it. I understood his personal vendetta, standing there with his fists balled and his arms crossed, but I didn't like the Daily Planet being answerable to a higher power any more than he did, least of all while I was marching under its flag.

"If you want me to rally the troops," I said, "you can forget it – half of those guys out there hate me for breaking that story, and the other half think I got lucky. The only one who'd follow me into battle is Jimmy Olsen, and the last fight he was in he broke his fist on the other guy's face."

"They don't need to like you," he said, "this is not a beauty pageant, Lane. They just need to respect you."

And because I couldn't help but wonder what he wanted from me, or what made him think I was suited to the job, I said: "What do you even want me to do?" Silently I wondered what the Planet had gotten itself into, putting someone like Perry White at the top.

"Lane," he said, "I want you to lead by example." And in his glare, there was a flickering, glimmering hope that everything would change.

*

The rain beat hard against my window that night. The sleeping pills were in the top drawer of my nightstand, next to my bed, underneath the picture of Clark. This was the thought that stopped me reaching for them night after night, knowing I would draw out that picture with them, and then I would have to wonder where he was and how he was doing. But then, I always wondered that anyway, and that was keeping me up.

Three months and three days – and I am not counting – since he left Smallville, and I had heard nothing from him. That was when I left Smallville myself, when I realised that, with no Chloe and no Clark, there was no reason for me to stay. But when I asked Kara if she would come to Metropolis, she just said she would finish what Clark had started and wouldn’t elaborate further.

I would never tell anybody, but it was a comfort to me knowing that the Kent farm would remain the Kent farm, and that it wouldn’t fall empty. And then there was the fact, one simple fact that I would only whisper to myself in the dead of night, the fact I would strike from the record when I blinked open my eyes in the morning.

I missed Clark.

But this is how it goes: the change was not immediately palpable, but when I walked around like I owned the place with no reprimand and others like me could hold their heads up higher for longer, everybody knew what was going down. The Daily Planet started quietly and conveniently laying off staff who would have been assets in the days when the paper was put to bed with Lex Luthor. Among those who remained, there was a change in feeling: some who before were economical with the truth stopped pinching pennies, and Jimmy stopped warning me about the time when he was almost fired – rather, he wore it as a badge of honour: Jimmy Olsen, decorated in the fight for truth.

“You should be proud of yourself, Lane,” Perry said to me one day, when all I could figure was that all this was down to his leadership.

And because by then I knew his bark was worse than his bite, I said: “Chief, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t call me ‘Chief’, Lois.” He levelled me seriously, “This is all the result of your exposé on Luthorcorp.”

“Yeah, fat lot of good that story did anyone.” The Daily Planet may have been strengthening its walls against corruption, but the rest of Metropolis was still up for sale to the highest bidder, and Lex’s parole date was looming. At the trial he had feigned ignorance of Luthorcorp’s most nefarious deeds, and neither I nor anyone else had been able to prove otherwise.

“Don’t beat yourself up, kid,” said Perry.

“Don’t call me ‘kid’.”

But I pushed myself up and got back to work, because I was young, and I was still determined to set the world on fire, and the thought of burning out myself was unthinkable.

*

A week later it was five months and twelve days – still not counting. Kara had told me she had heard from him, but she was sketchy on the details and there was something evasive in the way she was on the phone. And that night I finally grabbed the pills out of the drawer by my bed, but put them on the top of the night stand and carried the picture into the lounge with me. Because I needed to sit in the warm, diffuse glow of my reading lamp and study his face, because I was starting to wonder what that smile had looked like: bright and warm, two lips parted and hair ruffled. He hadn’t smiled like that the day he said goodbye: that had been a "sweet sorrow" smile, a "see you around" for the loss of a close friend.

“I understand the need to get away and sort your head out,” I said, feeling stupid, talking out loud to the air around me, “but you don’t think you’re kind of pushing it?” And then, like an answer to the call I never made, someone buzzed up to my apartment.

“Lois Lane. I need your help.”

“I –” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, “Clark?” But there was silence at the end of the line. I frowned and hung up. After a moment’s recollection, grabbed my coat and keys from where I had slung them at the end of the couch and left the apartment. Down the stairs, two at a time: does Lois Lane know any other way?

And it was really him – not that I cared. He was standing so close to the door that when I opened it I almost walked right into him. He grabbed me by my shoulders and righted me, and then he let his arms fall back to his side, and said, “Lois Lane.”

“Clark,” I pushed my hair back out of my face and pulled air into my lungs: a million particles, all colliding like my lungs were my mind, “what are you doing here?” But he said nothing – just took me by the arm and pulled me out of the doorway. My breath came out in a rush, falling against him again, my hand on his chest. I shoved him back, but he kept his hand on my wrist, and that made me wary. I stared up, jaw set, into his face, into his eyes, much darker than I remembered and so cold. And there was something so alien in that stare; I felt a quick shudder of aversion run through me.

I wrenched my hand away. To my surprise, he let it go. I stepped back, knowing my face was set in a deep frown, taking all of him in now: his clothes, and the way he held himself.

“Who are you?” I said.

He fixed me again with that implacable stare, and said: “I need your help.”


	2. Kal-El

I could take a blow to the head without losing my mind, but Clark’s always seemed to be in the last place he looked, and I wondered what happened to him this time. He took me by the hand, not by the wrist, and pulled me out of the doorway again. When I recoiled, he tightened his grip on my hand and made to drag me down the street. “Stop,” I said, and I was thinking about hitting him this time. But he stopped, and looked at me like he knew what kind of damage I was thinking of, and like he didn’t believe I could inflict it. Daring me: daring me to defy him.

Who are you, I wondered again, that you’d look down on me now, even as you’re asking my help? “I don’t want to have to hurt you,” I said, with a cool look at our clasped hands — but if he caught the veiled threat, there was no indication: still he watched me with those non-communicative, hollow eyes; no smirk, no glare, no acknowledgement that this could have been part of a game we used to play. So, "Look," I said, changing tack, "if you want my help you are going to have to help me."

We stood there for a moment, my hand in his, matching stare for stare. He was looking into me, weighing me up; for a brief moment I wondered if he thought about things in the same way as the Clark I knew. What would the Clark I know do, if this was our first meeting?

And then he let my hand go, and let his fall to his side, still watching me: truce, Lois Lane. And now I had to decide what to do with this person that I knew and didn't know in an instant, and what could I do? I had to keep him with me, and then maybe I would figure him out — and then maybe I could help him. I shouldered his role now, and took his hand, leading him back into the apartment block and up to my apartment, sat him down in my kitchen chair and crossed my arms.

"What happened to you, Clark?" I was the watcher now, not the watched, "Why are you acting like this?"

"Why do you call me Clark?" he said, which, I supposed, ruled out identity theft.

"Because it's your name." I took a chair, and sat down across from him, and silently, and maybe for old time's sake, I added 'Amnesia Boy'.

He tilted his head to the side, still studying me, "I am not Clark," he said, "Clark is gone." The thought flashed up briefly in my mind: that maybe I should take him to a psychologist, someone who knew how to help better than me. But then I dusted off an old memory: wrapping Clark in a blanket and taking him to the hospital. That was our first meeting; I knew better this time than to palm him off on a scientific establishment which had seen none of the things I was thinking of.

And, the way he had gripped my hand as though he would have fallen off the surface of the planet if he let go, I didn't think he would let anyone else try to help anyway.

"Why did you come to me?" I said, "How did you know me?"

"I have met you before." He was so like Clark in that moment, when his eyes seemed to know me: there and gone again, with all the memories of our friendship, blink and you'll miss it.

"Do you remember Kara?" I said.

His hands clenched, his face flickered: the first emotion he really showed, subdued and dark. "My cousin," he said. I wondered for a moment if Kara might have done something to Clark. But her silence at the end of the line when I had asked about him was so complete — not like she was hiding something, but like she had nothing to hide and nothing to tell. I was tired. How could I be so callous, so callous that I would dispell a cold thought through cool analyses of Kara's behaviour rather than trust in my relationship to her, and her relationship to Clark. Tired, and so, so like a reporter.

He was placid again. And what was almost more unsettling to me than this aversion to the girl who could be his sister was his indifference to mentions of Lana, Chloe and even his parents, with no indication that he either knew or cared about them. And though he said he knew me, I wondered if he cared.

"Who are you?" I said again.

"My name is Kal-El."

Kal-El.

"I know that name," I said, "people came looking for Kal-El in Smallville during the last meteor shower." And I found a space ship there once too. A thought fell in my stomach, making my skin prickle: irrational but horrifying. I saw in front of me a shell, and inside something strange and unknowable, unseen: "Do you take people's bodies?"

I asked it without meaning, heard my voice as from a great distance, strange and troubled.

"No," he said, and I tried to believe it. "No, Lois Lane." He said it more forcefully the second time. I looked into his face again, and his eyes in their sockets — still unknown, but maybe not unknowable. I managed a smile. "I need your help," he said, and I knew my smile was wry at that: I'm trying to help you now, Clark.

He stood up now. "My planet is gone," he said, looking down on me, "but it will see a resurrection through me."

"So," I said, "you are not human," and I wondered what this person who both was Clark and wasn't, who talked about the recreation of dead civilisations with scientific dispassion, was asking of me. "But you know I won't believe you if you say it like that," I said, and I stood up to face him, waiting to learn that he had forgotten himself again, and that this was some invented past: coping through delusion. Because, I may have brought up the possibility in my own mind first, but he had made it real.

Can he read my mind?

"I can do things," he said, "that your people can't even dream of."

My people.

Clark always had an outsider complex.

"You grew up in Smallville," I said, "you would be abnormal if you didn't have a meteor power."

I probably wasn't far wrong. No scientist had ever come to Smallville to take a survey. For all we knew, half the population were living with meteor infection, maybe hearing some of the things being said about them and crying out in silence: not me, I'm not like that. I sometimes wondered. He was still analysing me, casting that cold, appraising stare over me again. What would it take, his eyes asked, What would it take to convince you?

"Come with me, Lois Lane," he said, and held out his hand. Was this how it was to be — each taking turns to lead the other until we had walked around the world hand in hand? Then would we understand something? I took his hand, and he led me to the roof of my building. That was when I realised it was raining: battering the window in my kitchen, streaking through Clark's hair and down my face. Cold, hard and real; each streak shining silver against the black sky.

I watched him walk to the edge of the roof, and then reach out for my hand again. He pulled me to the edge next to him, and I breathed in against the vertigo — vertigo, and the sense that I had played out a scene like this before. For a sickening moment I thought we were going to jump. Then he raised his hand, and pointed up into the sky.

"There," he said, his hand warm against my side, "that's where my planet used to be."

"There's nothing there," I said: no star, nothing.

"It's all gone," he said, "the star exploded," and when he looked at me, I knew he couldn't lie.

I stepped back, and looked at him: tall and stoic, a dark monument to a world which died maybe a thousand years before I was born — who came to me, and asked for help through Clark's lips. "Where is Clark?" I said: where is the man I was waiting for? — why have you come instead?

"He is gone," he said again, with finality, and I closed my eyes.

"I want him," I said, and I felt the rain slide down the cracks in my clenched fists.

"It's not your choice," came the forceful reply. I opened my eyes. His jaw was set, his eyes almost glowing with his vehemence.

How could you? I thought. How could you come to me like this, looking like him. He caught my fist when I threw it, and then held me against him so I couldn't move: my grief and my frustration all burning me up from the inside.

"I need your help, Lois," he said, his breath against my ear, his voice so gentle I could believe he was Clark and hate him for the deception. "My planet is gone — its principles, its ideology. But people listen to you, Lois —"

"You want 'my people'," I was shaking, "to give up their principles, and their ideologies," I started to laugh, bitter and so, so tired — hadn't we forced this on each other enough? Weren't we still? I didn't own the world. I couldn't give it to this stranger. "And you want me to convince them to do it. Why? Why should I even try?"

"Because," and he let me go, stepping backwards towards the edge of the roof, "my people's ideas did not deserve to die with them." He was soaked now: his dark hair plastered down to his forehead, but his eyes burning brilliant with conviction.

"If your people had been so enlightened," I said, coolly, "so enlightened that you'd force their cultures on people you don't even know, maybe they wouldn't have died in the first place."

He blinked, and then his lip twitched: a smirk, finally an expression, but cold and vicious. "Lois Lane," he said, "I don't need your help." And then he stepped backwards, and fell off the roof.


	3. Lex Luthor

It was all inevitable after the night that I slipped.

I knew I would look back on that moment and try to work it out: try to understand what had made me slip up so hard, when I never slip up at all — anger? Blame? I was only human. But it didn't matter what had made me do what I couldn't change: I had done it.

I had pushed him back with my words, let go his hand, let him fall away from me.

And when I looked over the side of the building, and saw no knot of people obscuring his body — saw no body at all — I knew what I had done. Even as I hurried down to the street, half running, half slipping down the stairs, I knew it.

And then as I stood alone in the street with the water spraying all around me, I understood.

There was one person in Metropolis — no, the world — with the power to challenge me, and I had pushed towards him a man looking for that kind of power, a man who could fall twenty stories and then disappear.

Cultural appropriation was the least of my worries.

I was shivering; still in my pajamas, so wet now that they clung against my body like my hair stuck to my face. Slowly, I turned around and walked back up to my apartment.

I left my pajamas in a wet heap in the middle of my kitchen and pulled some clothes out of my wardrobe. Then I stood by the phone and breathed in, closing my eyes.

I picked it up.

"Hey, Kara Kent."

"It's Lois."

They say that if you can name your fear you can tame it.

Lex was the one who named me.

"Let this serve as a warning," he said, on the day he left prison, "to the press, who rounded on me like a pack of mad dogs: though you have influence with the courts now, though you hold sway with your false justice," here he paused — "Giving time to let the irony sink in," I said savagely to Jimmy as we watched from the Daily Planet newsroom — and looked into the camera, seemed to look at me, "change is on the wind."

It was a declaration of war.

War against Perry, who reminded me more and more each day of my distant father. War against Jimmy, who might be the best news photographer Metropolis had ever seen, I wasn't sure. War against the City, against its people, and every single, last grain of truth in it.

After that I started catching the shuffling of feet and shifty looks other reporters would cast eachother when they didn't know I was there — and I knew what they were thinking.

It was like Perry had said, that first day when he made me his de facto second-in-command: up to this point, the Daily Planet's reform had taken place in a vacuum. Lex Luthor was once again moving in to fill the void, and this was our test.

Even I sometimes wondered if we would pass. And I never shook off my rep as "Mad Dog" Lane — but even then I knew one day more people would use it in praise than had ever used it in defamation.

"Are you kidding me?" I heard Jimmy saying as I walked into the newsroom one day after Lex's release. "What if someone had told Woodward and Bernstein to just accept it?"

He talking to Burns, one of the old-timers who had most vehemently resisted me, and who I recognised from behind from the hideous jacket he had worn to the office every day since I started working there.

I sidled up behind them to listen and leaned against the desk with my arms crossed.

Burns laughed: a throaty, phlegmatic wheezing, a smoker's laugh. Jimmy clenched his jaw and opened his mouth — then he saw me, caught my eye. I shook my head silently, and he closed his mouth again.

"You and Lane?" said Burns, shaking his head, "Pair of crusading newbies. You're hardly Woodward and Bernstein, kid."

"Say that again when you've got a story worth printing," I said, "some of us have been publishing real news". Burns leered at me over his shoulder, and I raised an eyebrow. He didn't say anything, but his eyes gleamed with a malevolance that I was becoming more familiar with by the day. I nodded over his shoulder, "What have you got, Jimmy?"

Jimmy licked his lips and looked warily at Burns, then he shook his head and said, "Nothing."

I made a show of rolling my eyes and waited for him over at my desk — I knew how he felt about Burns. That kind of attitude wasn't just unpleasant: it might well be dangerous, we had no way of knowing.

"It's this," Jimmy said furtively, handing me a manilla folder. I opened it up and pulled out the photograph inside.

A high-resolution picture from one of Lex's recent press conferences. I didn't understand at first: the foreground was blurred and hard to make out. Then I caught a face in the shadows of a doorway at the back, and all my cold-sweat nightmares came true in an instant.

"Clark," I said.

No, not Clark.

Kara had not been forthcoming, but she seemed like she knew something. She had muttered something about Clark's father which I didn't understand, and when I pressed further she just told me not to "freak out".

"Too late," I had said.

I hadn't heard from her since that first night. At first I had left increasingly irked messages on her cell; then I had to assume she was dealing with it in her own way, that maybe she would find Clark. Had to hope. Now Clark — Kal-El — was with Lex, and I didn't know what to think.

"Why would CK suddenly show up again with Lex?" said Jimmy.

I just shook my head. Because of me, I wanted to say — becaused I slipped, and screwed up, and now I don't know what's going to happen.

"I don't know," I said.

Security had been stepped up at Luthorcorp since the last time I had been compelled to do any serious digging. In a twisted way, Lex and I made eachother better: if I were a good investigative reporter, it's because I had to be — and if Lex was good at what he did, well, I didn't plan to make that easy either.

I left one more message with Kara's cell, and then I went in behind enemy lines.

Jimmy had once said to me, as he turned to leave me alone in the newsroom, that the Daily Planet building spooked him at night. "It's supposed to be buzzing," he had said, with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders, "when it's empty like this, I find it kind of eerie."

We'd all clocked in extra time after-hours. It had surprised me to hear Jimmy say that, and the things he had done for others here at night shined for me — sometimes I think he was the best of us.

But Jimmy Olsen had never been in Luthorcorp tower when night was ringing through the building.

Lex had switched things around again. I cursed him under my breath. But something was going down, I knew it, and Lex was good, but there was always evidence, and I was going to get it if I had to break into every last place where the name "Luthorcorp" had so much as been whispered. I had to.

Click, click, click.

What a cliché.

"Don't even think about," said Lex, as I froze over by one of his filing cabinets. "I'm standing six feet away, you can't get close enough to knock the gun out of my hand before I pull the trigger. If you're lucky," he paused, "you'll be dead before you hit the floor... if you're lucky."

I closed my eyes, put my hands at the back of my neck and took a deep breath. "Murder, Lex?" I opened my eyes again and turned to face him, "I might be wrong — I'm not a lawyer — but I think that might be a breach of parole. Not sure."

His lip curled, and he eyed me down the barrel of his gun, "And this is, what? Your fifth count of breaking and entering?"

If there was ever a time I had to rein in my ego, this was it: I had a few choice words about give and take and public good, but that was playing with fire — I couldn't pretend that Lex didn't have power in this situation.

"Go on," he said, looking almost amused now: trying to provoke, "how are you planning to convince me it's in my best interest to let you go?"

"Are you kidding?" My mind was racing, "All the notes about Clark they'll find on my hard drive," I paused, "and in my desk drawer, on three pen drives and the Daily Planet database." I held his eye, "If I'm gonna win the Pulitzer I'd rather it weren't post-humously, but what's a girl to do?"

"You can do better than that, Lois." Lex blinked slowly at me, and then steadied the gun with his other hand. "Get to the window."

I stared. "If it's a choice between jumping and getting shot, I'll bite the bullet, thanks."

"You'll go to the window," he said, "because you still think you can turn this situation around, and you want to buy time to do it."

I had a bad hand, and Lex was holding all the cards.

"You can lead a horse to water," I said, as I crossed the room to the window, "but you can't make it jump." I put my hands up against the glass, where Metropolis glittered along the skyline.

"You're in control of this situation, Lex," I said, quietly, "I'm not a no-name tabloid reporter this time — people will look into my disappearance."

There was a crack, and the glass shattered. I flung my hands up in front of my face and shut my eyes.

"I'm well aware of that, thankyou Lois." He sounded less cool now: still playing at civility, but hinting at his frustration.

There was blood on my hands.

"You think this is stalemate," he said, "but you're wrong. I don't have to shoot you, because I don't need you dead — yet. But," he was whispering, "this is the perfect chance to stage a debut."

His voice was so close, almost hissing in my ear.

We both moved at the same time.

I spun around and felt my fist connect with bone: Lex staggered sideways.

At the same time, his hand hit my neck palm out, and I felt myself fall back, with nothing to fall back against, feet scrabbling, arms flying out.

And then I was falling.

They say you see your life flash before your eyes — I didn't. I heard myself screaming, and saw the stars blurring in the sky. I saw myself leaning out of the window, waving myself goodbye, and Jimmy taking the photo which would finally make the front page.

And there was Clark, with his arms around me, pulling me up against him, my head against his shoulder.

I wanted to cry for the blood on my hands: my head in the crook of his neck, my tears on the collar of his shirt. I was bringing my arms up around his back, holding him as we fell up from the street.

Falling.

Wait.

I was frowning.

I looked up — into the cool hollow eyes which weren't Clarks, but which sat in his face.

I let go his shirt where I had twisted my fingers into it, my hands stinging from the scratches. He cocked his head sideways and looked at me: gleaning no malice for our last meeting, just his hands on my waist and my heart pounding for second chances.

And right there, before a million realisations crashed in on me, I finally named my fear.

"What are you, Kal-El," I said, searching his eyes for some glimmer of recognition, "some kind of Superman?"


	4. Kara Zor-El

Kara spilled her guts that night.

We were hanging there. The man who looked like Clark, and me — we hung in the sky against all odds and I didn't know what to think.

"You can fly," I said, starting to tremble from the cold, or the adrenaline or who knows what. "You can fly."

Someone shouted something, as though from a distance — but his mouth didn't move. He was watching me. I looked down, down past our dangling feet, and there was a crowd gathering below: pointing and shouting and lights flashing from cameras.

One of the girls turned her face up and looked right at me: glimmering blue eyes catching mine, and I knew it was Kara, and wondered how she got there so fast.

"What is 'Superman'?" asked Kal-El. He was still studying me.

I breathed in, and blinked slowly. Culture shock. He needed a definition for a word that didn't exist: something I had just made up, something anyone would understand.

"You," I said, "someone who can do things that," I paused here, "things that mortal men can't do. Someone who can fly."

My hands had fallen against his shoulders, fingers digging into them. I needed to get a grip.

I looked over my shoulder at the Luthorcorp building. Lex was standing at the shattered window, watching us both as if this were the last thing he had expected, and as if he had planned for it all along. My hands twitched, and stung.

I looked back at Kal-El, still studying me — doing what? Commiting my face to memory? Trying to understand my body language? His face was so human and at once so alien: distant, incomprehensible.

I had to get a hold on my emotions, this time.

"Why do you look so much like Clark?" I said, and my voice broke towards the end, because why should he? How dare he?

"I am Clark." There was no trace of a lie: eyes dark, open, saying things in a language I didn't understand.

"How can you be Clark?" I asked, "You said Clark was gone. You said he was d— you said he was 'gone'."

But he just repeated it: "I am Clark." I wondered if he had no means to explain it, who he was, where he came from. And too late I realised we were losing altitude, and too soon we were standing on the pavement, surrounded by shattered glass and thronging people.

And he was gone.

I only realised how warm he was when his hands were no longer around my waist, when the cold started to seep into my bones and I shivered in my heart.

"John King, Daily Star. Come on, Lane —"

"Robert Renolds, WGBS News. Ms Lane, can you —"

How the other half live.

I looked up again at the window I had fallen through. Lex had disappeared. The sky was empty — black, partially billowing grey cloud. I shuddered.

"Kara Kent. Lois —"

She gripped my elbow, stronger than expected, and tugged my arm. I gave way, and fell slightly, and then ducked past the reporters still angling for a quote and into the alley behind Luthorcorp where we broke into a run.

Kara is the first person I remember running one step ahead of me. I didn't remember her being this fast in Smallville: she wasn't panting, she wasn't slowing; she was throwing caution to the wind.

"I hardly know where to start," she said, back in my apartment, around the corner of the kitchen table from me with coffee steaming in the space between us.

One thing I learned pretty fast as an interviewer: awkward silence is often the best way to start someone talking, whether they know where to or not. I was never fun for me, but I particularly I hated to do it to Kara — hated to slip into that role at all.

She gripped her mug in both hands and blew on it, shifting in her seat. Then she looked back and me and shrugged, and said, "I guess — you know Clark is adopted, right?"

I nodded.

"Well, his adoption was kind of unusual. You know —" she paused. I felt something catch in my throat and swallowed.

"Is Clark an alien?" I asked, quietly. She looked at me, wide-eyed — afraid suddenly, tentative, and relieved — and nodded.

"Are you an alien?" I said. Again she nodded, and I closed my eyes, allowing this information to sink in.

"But it's not like —" she said quickly, agitated. I opened my eyes and looked at her. Her mouth fell open, hip bottom lip quivered. I smiled slightly, and she relaxed. "It's not like we're all that different," she said, "this is our home now. Clark doesn't even remember Krypton."

Krypton.

"What's happened to him?" I said. There were so many more questions I wanted to string together and add onto the end, but I bit them back — I couldn’t do that to her. That wasn’t fair.

"I don't know," she said. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. "Look," she said, "Clark's father — my uncle, Jor-El — sent an AI with him, a computer, to carry out his wishes. I don't trust him, I didn't trust either of them."

Kara was so like Clark, really. This was the most distressed I had ever seen her, and she was keeping it together: brewing under the surface, a nuclear storm contained by her skin.

"What happened, Kara?"

My voice didn't shake. I wanted to reassure, and reassure myself.

"Clark didn't tell me everything," she said, looking at me with honesty in her eyes, "I know it. I know this computer has done something to him. He left, and now he's come back and he's..."

"Like this." I said. She nodded.

"Lois, I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head now and leaning forward on the table, "I'm so sorry — he told me not to tell you. And I tried to find him after I got your call but the world is a big place, you know? I couldn't find him."

"It's alright," I said. "It's okay." Then I breathed out through my mouth, "It's my fault he's with Lex." I closed my eyes, "Damn it."

I heard Kara snort. When I opened my eyes again she was forcing down a smile. She shook her head, "No Lois, really — I insist." She placed a hand on her chest mockingly, "Let me pick up the blame."

I felt my mouth split into the first real grin since this whole mess started. And on the surface I could never admit it, but Kara was the sister Lucy never had the chance to be.

We settled into a more comfortable and contemplative silence after that.

I thought about how much Kara had lost in her life already. Five years I wouldn't know where to start understanding: I never really had a home or anyone who was close enough to lose.

Then for a brief while I'd had both: the smell of corn on the wind, deep in my heart, and so many other things.

But Kara had had so much more torn away from her, and I would never understand how that felt.

"Kara," I said, looking over at her, "what was it like where you're from?"

Kara stayed with me in Metropolis after that night.

And at the same time, the whole world fell to pieces and was remade. How could it not?

Perry was waiting for me when I walked into the newsroom the next day — the day my name hit the front page of every major newspaper in the Western hemisphere. He was right at the epicentre of activity, he stared out at me, down the space between the desks, through the people around him, and right into my skull.

He just nodded silently, and I knew to follow him into his office.

The first thing he said to me that day was, "I hope you've got your copy to hand."

I had already put it on his desk.

"Two things have happened, Lane," he said, "which you might — understandably —" he glanced at the bandages over my hands, "not have heard about yet. Number one, whoever that guy is who saved your life yesterday, he went on to do more of the same across the globe. You were first. We at the Daily Planet are planning on having a field day, are you in?"

My lips twitched. Good old Perry: good news first. I nodded.

"Number two," he said, and here he shoved his hands in his pockets, "yours is not the only name that's going to be associated with this guy. Lex Luthor has been going on about how 'intimately involved' he is with Luthorcorp — how true that is remains to be seen. But we'll keep an eye on him."

I crossed my arms and braced myself. "Is Lex pressing charges? About the break-in?"

He snorted. "He says he invited you there — and that you tripped and fell through the double-glazing."

I raised a sceptical eyebrow. Then shrugged. "Maybe we'll just let that one slide without investigation, Chief." I didn't always need my methods disclosed.

"For the last time, Lane —"

But I was already out the door.

I stopped thinking about the picture in the drawer by my bed at night and started staying later at work. I would climb up onto the roof as the sun set, glinting against every window in the city, and stand there with the Daily Planet globe rotating and creaking behind me, calling his name.

I called him by many names, but he didn't come. He remained distant: saving people, appearing with Lex, and dressing in black.

Building PR for Luthorcorp. Because that's what it was: I realised, as soon as Lex announced his run for the Presidency.

"How could people forget so soon?" Jimmy asked me, as we had looked, horrorstruck at the press release. "They didn't forget Watergate."

"Lex is no Nixon," I said, leaning back against the desk and setting my jaw, "he hasn't been impeached — yet."

But I was quietly confident: burning inside with anticipation.

Kara and I had a plan.


	5. Supergirl

I want to change the world.

It's all you hear from some people when they start out as journalists.

It fades fastest in the ones who shout the loudest — who find a cause in everything and burn out on parking meters, who become jaded and cynical and forget why they took up the craft.

I just got on with the job. Man bites dog. Inverted triangle. I made it about other things — the simple pleasure of just victory over someone like Lex, a chance to make trouble and get people's backs up — and I kept the spark in a small cavity at the back of my heart, protected from the wind but glimmering through every story I wrote.

And now I was burning.

I didn't believe that Lex could win an election now, but being tied to a superhero gave his campaign momentum.

My disparaging editorials started getting disparaging comments on the Daily Planet forums. Jimmy and I had fun joking about how Lex spent his free time — but the support for him worried me.

But if Kara was worried she didn't show it.

We didn't talk about the consequences of what we were doing — we were starting something, and we weren't sure how it would all shake out, but we burned with anticipation.

"It has to be big," I said.

"Kal-El will get there first."

Neither of us mentioned what we had both thought in the same moment: that we could fake it. We knew it had to be real, or we'd be just like Lex — pushing me out of a window, and taking the credit for saving my life.

"It'll happen."

And then, one night, when I was turning to leave, he answered my call.

I watched him skimming across the sky towards me, his dark shirt fluttering around him and his hollow eyes on mine, and shivered, and wrapped my arms around my body.

He was there almost as soon as I realised he was coming: touched down in front of me, more graceful than I could have imagined, and watched me. We stood together in silence, facing eachother on the cold stone of the roof with the air still and cold all around us.

"You've been calling for me," he said at last. His voice held no pre-judgement. A wry thought occured that he was just reiterating the facts, like any journalist, and I almost smiled before I realised it.

But I had to be careful. I knew from experience that one misstep can push a person away — I had done that with Kal-El already — and there was more at stake here than in any of the interviews I had misjudged as a rookie.

"I want to help you," I said, after turning it over, and I watched him.

There was no visible reaction. He remained still, and just watched me back.

"I told you," he said, "I don't need your help, Lois Lane."

"You came," I said. I kept my eyes on his and took a step forwards. He didn't step back, and didn't reply, so I pressed my lips together, and said, my heart burning, "Why did you come here?"

I didn't qualify what any of it really meant, and I saw him searching for the question inside of himself. Then he said, plainly, "I want to restore Krypton's former glory."

And maybe that's what I had asked for.

I had to be softer this time: turning his words over without the knee-jerk reactionary response.

"What about us?" I said eventually, almost whispering, "What about Earth's glory?"

His face remained still, but his mouth opened just a little. Then he stepped forward — slowly — so that we were breathing the same air, and said, low and emotive, "I mean you no harm."

I closed my eyes. The air around him was warmer. He smelled like Clark, and there we were, back on the farm and arguing about nothing that really mattered.

I almost swayed then, almost leaned forwards and threw my arms around his neck, almost told him I had missed him.

The air rushed out of my lungs again. I swallowed.

"I don't understand," I said, when the moment had passed, opening my eyes again and looking up at him.

He cocked his head, and his eyes watched my face like he would remember this forever. Then his gaze met my eyes, and I felt my heart beat.

I had to step back, and cold air filled the space between us.

"Why are you with Lex Luthor?" I said, keeping my voice void of emotion, although I thought I knew the answer.

“Lex Luthor can help me,” he said.

The silence gathered around us, but I just waited, watching him, knowing there was more.

He blinked those cool eyes slowly, then said, “he will help me if I help him.”

“He’ll double-cross you,” I said, still keeping my voice steady but shaking my head. “He can’t help himself.”

He said nothing.

I breathed in and steeled myself. “Lex will think he wants to help you,” I said, “because he thinks you’re Clark — he thinks you’re Clark, letting him in finally, and maybe he really believes he wants to help.”

I'd come to understand Lex very well.

A slight breeze had picked up now, shifting Kal-El’s clothes against his still form, and something passed behind his eyes. I thought he recognised what I was saying, and decided to go on.

“Eventually he’ll realise you’re not Clark,” I said softly, “and he’ll resent you for it.”

Like me, I thought with aversion, but so much worse.

I stepped forwards again, and he let me, turning his head to keep his eyes on my face.

“Let me help you instead,” I said, and, not really knowing why, I put my hand out to touch my fingers to his chest, where his heart was.

There was a moment, and then he shook his head.

“You don’t want to help, Lois Lane.”

He gently put his hand under my chin tilting his head and looking softly at my face. I held myself tall, but didn't flinch away from his touch.

"You don't want to help with this," he said again, and he seemed almost sad.

I breathed in. “You said you don’t want to hurt me,” I said.

I carefully took his hand from under my jaw and held it in both of mine, felt it burn warm between my cold fingers, keeping my eyes on his, and said, “I trust you.”

His eyes sharpened, widened, and he opened his mouth as if he had something to say but no words to say it.

Then he seemed to stiffen and looked back over his shoulder. His face was unreadable again.

“I have to go,” he said, starting to turn away.

My breath caught in my throat. I was torn between my loyalties, my fears and what I didn't know I should do.

Then I made a decision I knew even then I would pay for.

“Wait,” I said, still holding his hand, pulling him back as he started away. “Stay here.”

He paused, and tilted his head to one side, watching me in confusion. Then I breathed in deep, my heart pounding hard against my rib cage, knowing I only had to keep him for a second.

“Let Kara handle it,” I said, and I clenched my eyes shut.

I kept his hand for a moment longer, then I dropped it. My heart felt it was disintegrating.

Then I took a deep breath, opened my eyes and looked into his face, because I owed him that. He looked back into my soul, and then stumbled away.

He shook his head and stood up straight, casting me a look of dark betrayal.

I didn't know why it hurt me, and I didn't know what to say.

Then he shot away over the horizon, and I closed my eyes again.

My hands were shaking.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, and I didn't know if I was talking to him or to myself.

The world had depended on the choice I made — but on some level it didn't matter to me why I'd done it or that I knew he was wrong. I'd pushed him away again, and we would all deal with the consequences.

At times like these, it doesn't matter who breaks the story — what matters is the exclusive, and the Daily Planet had an edge.

Me.

I was the exclusive for the story about Kal-El.

A week after the fact, nobody remembered that every paper in Metropolis had broken that story simultaneously — what people remembered was that his first rescuee, some up-and-coming with a name that sounded vaguely familiar, would only give her story to one newspaper.

I was about to one-up that, and nobody was going to bother masking their resentment.

Kara was bouncing off the walls when I got home.

"I did it," she said, "my face is going to be all over the front page of every paper in Metropolis."

I threw my keys on the kitchen table and dumped some instant coffee into a mug.

Kara was already in her seat, tapping her fingers against the table. I sat down in mine and, feeling like a weary mother all of a sudden, said, "Go on then — tell me what you did."

"There was a fire in one of the apartment blocks on the east sound of town," she said, and added, with more than a touch of pride, " and I got everyone out."

She put her hand up for a high five. I shook my head, trying to force back the grin, and hit it, feeling like a kid again this time.

"Anyway," she said, as an afterthought, leaning forwards on the table, "Kal-El turn up late for the party. Didn't say anything, just left."

An image of Kal-El, suddenly so like Clark, looking at me with those eyes and that broken-hearted betrayal flashed before me.

"Yeah, I kept him pretty busy," I said, staring into my coffee.

Kara was watching me with raised eyebrows when I looked back up.

"Not like that," I said, quickly.

Then I paused and and frowned at her, "Did it really come out like that?"

"Yeah," she said, still studying me, "little bit."

I wrote and rewrote my exclusive with 'Supergirl' over the course of the next day, and nobody who valued their life dared tell me to just put it to bed.

In the end, I turned it in half an hour before deadline and prepared myself to face the newsroom.

It was Jimmy's eye I'd caught first, and I felt a stab of pain as I realised I hadn't even considered him in all of this.

I wondered if Kara had thought about what exposing herself would mean for Jimmy.

But of course he didn't know: none of the pictures were clear enough for him to see that the girl he was slowly falling in love with was so much more than he could have imagined.

They say love is blind.

So, he gave me the same admiring grin he had shown me that day, it felt so long ago, when I had knocked down the door to his apartment brandishing the files that would prove Luthorcorp was up to no good — and I just smiled back.

I stayed in the newsroom after it had emptied, looking at the clock with a rueful anticipation, ready to start from the beginning.

I had just got up from my desk and picked up my coat when I heard a grunting, "Lane."

I had managed to avoid Perry for most of the day.

I turned to face him, and said, "Chief."

This time he didn't even acknowledge it, and I knew he was serious. He glared at me for a long time, and then he said, "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

I felt myself swallowing — couldn't help it — but put my hand on my hip, and said, "Chief?"

He put his hands in his pockets and shook his head, "You know what I'm talking about, Lane. You're breaking into Luthorcorp without a lead, you're getting exclusive interviews with superheroes and you won't let anyone in on your methods —"

"Can you blame me?"

"And," he raised his voice dangerously, "you've been skulking around at the end of the day, going up to the roof when everyone's left — yeah, I noticed."

I leaned against the desk nearest to me, and pressed my lips together. Then I looked up at him, and said, "You're going to have to trust me, Chief," in a way I never could have to the General.

But if Perry had asked me to tell him everything then, I would have done it and died of the shame.

He narrowed his eyes and appraised me in a moment that seemed to last forever. Then he seemed to reach a conclusion, and said, "Alright, do it."

I felt myself smiling in relief, like the teenager who's been let off a grounding, and turned to leave.

"But Lane,"

I stopped, and looked over my shoulder.

"Don't call me 'Chief'."


	6. Jor-El

I've never really thought of myself as a dualist.

But the Metropolis skyline is dominated by two things: the "iconic" rotating globe of the Daily Planet, and the tall, dark Luthorcorp building with its purple glowing logo.

It seemed like the two buildings should drift further apart, like the city should be split in two between them: one half dark and stormy, the other cast in sunlight. Which was which depended on who you spoke to, but most were with us for now.

My worldview wasn't so black and white that I couldn't understand there was some ethical give-and-take in investigative reporting, but it was never more tempting to think of things as diametric moral absolutes. That's why I had to hold onto my principles, because if I let myself dehumanise Lex I might do something I could never come back from.

Two buildings and two ideas, now broken apart and manifest as two figures: Superman, and Supergirl.

"He never says anything," said Kara one night, after a bad pile-up on the road out of town. "He just sees me and leaves."

But I had seen Kal-El on the television, and she was not alone. Not even the children who clung to his leg coaxed a word from his lips. Not like Kara, whose rescuees got smiles and soft reassurances, jokes and hugs — but he looked down at them almost tenderly, gently prying their fingers from his dark jeans, and sometimes I thought I saw something of Clark about the way he did it.

And it pained me to admit, I hadn't planned much further ahead than this. We knew that establishing Kara as a superhero "informally" affiliated with the Daily Planet would undermine Kal-El's association with Luthorcorp. What we didn't know was where to take it from there.

Perry sometimes looked at me like he understood what I was doing, reminding me that I operated as a journalist: my job was not to act on the public's behalf, but to tell them what I knew so they could make the decisions.

But I didn't know anything, and what was worse: I had no evidence. And I knew what his sharp eyes were telling me, that I was making our crusade too personal, but I also knew that if Lex Luthor gained more power through Clark I would never forgive myself.

And Perry knew that whatever I was doing, it wasn't wrong or bad for the Planet — so he let me alone to break stories and take air on the roof.

But still I whispered apologies in my bed at night.

And I didn't know why, because Kal-El was wrong about Kara, and wrong about me.

But then I wasn't apologising to him. I was apologising to myself, for not knowing if I had made the right choice, and letting it get to me.

The way I saw it, I had two options now: I could break back into Luthorcorp at a time when security was highest, or I could visit Jor-El. And I wasn't in the mood for another defenestration.

"I'm going with you," said Kara, as I shoved extra socks into a pocket of my overflowing rucksack. "That place is dangerous."

"It's more dangerous for you than me," I said, and as I yanked the zip it came off in my hand, "Great."

I started unpacking my bag again. Kara sighed heavily. Before I could stop her, the room was a whirlwind. I rolled my eyes, and hitched the full rucksack up on my shoulder. "Appreciated, Kara."

"You can't stop me coming you know," she said, and I realised that nothing was more irritating than a surrogate sister with the power to do what she wanted. I looked at her, exasperated, and let my gaze flick briefly over to the fake tile in the floor where I kept the kryptonite conspicuously hidden in a lead-lined box.

Kara put her hands on her hips. "Nice try," she said, "you won't even use it against Kal-El — don't act like you'd use it on me over something like this,"

That was infuriating, and so like Clark.

"Fine, whatever," I shifted my weight, "but you're waiting outside."

A few years ago, I got on a plane with Clark's mother, and when we crash-landed in the Arctic, I nearly died. I thought I did, and that I went to heaven: it turns out, Martha took me to the Fortress of Solitude, and Jor-El saved our lives.

This all became clear to me when I saw the place sober for the first time and recognised it for the shimmering ice palace where I clawed my life back.

So there were two images in my head: Jor-El the tyrant who ruled his son's life with an iron fist, and the strange warmth I felt for the place itself.

"I wish I could help," said Kara quietly as we approached the place. "I don't fully trust my memories, and I don't — that's not Jor-El." She wrapped her arms around herself, but there were no goosebumps on her skin like there were beneath the three layers of clothing I wore.

"It's okay," I said. I reached out and pulled on her elbow, "Look, wait here."

She looked for a moment like she was going to argue with me, but then she just sighed, and said, "Okay, just be careful." Then she sat down in the snow and rested her elbows on her knees as I approached the crystalline structure.

If there's one wrench I always fail to plan for, it's the most likely: that the security guard will be armed, that Lex might come into his office, that Kal-El would be in the Fortress of Solitude.

I breathed in when I saw him standing there, stark black against the glittering white. His back was to me, his shirt fluttering in a chill breeze that rushed through the place.

I ducked behind one of the columns, hoping — ever the optimist — that he wouldn't hear me.

My eyes clenched shut, I held my breath for one sickening moment of total silence. Then a voice boomed out — seemed to come from every molecule of the place, vibrating and crashing through me.

"And your cousin?"

I felt the voice warp my senses, so that I wasn't sure if I was hearing or feeling it, whether I could block it out if I put my hands over my ears or if it would keep drumming through my mind.

Then I heard Kal-El, and for a moment Clark's voice felt like an absolution: like the police officer firmly leading an intruder out of my mind.

"I want to tell her."

I took a deep breath and then turned quietly to peer around the column. Kal-El was standing in the same spot, but he seemed to move almost imperceptably. For a moment I wondered if he could hear me.

"You can't trust her, Kal-El. I've told you this." The voice was placating.

"I can't trust you."

My heart was drumming against my ribcage. Kal-El was shouting, his voice almost expressive.

There was an extended silence, and then the voice boomed out again. "Yet you trust her, after she betrayed you," a pause, and Kal-El stiffened. Then the voice seemed to roar in my head, "you let her stay."

I cried out, and fell to my knees, throwing my hands up to my ears. Forcing my eyes to stay open, I saw Kal-El watching me, a pained expression on his face.

In a moment he was by my side, unrelentingly gentle, putting his hands over mine, covering my ears though he knew it was useless.

I saw his lips moving, and heard his voice muffled through our hands: "She did what she thought was right," like he had been listening to my whispered apologies night after night, and he caught my eye then — his cool and unreadable but suddenly reassuring.

And I found myself asking how this was any different to what Clark would do in the same situation.

I slowly took his hands off my ears, and then stood up, braced for the next mental onslaught.

"Jor-El," I shouted up into the ceiling. "I've got a bone to pick with you, buddy."

This time, the voice was quieter, but no less firm. "I saved your life once, Lois Lane," he said, and I knew what he meant: he owed me nothing, in fact —

"What have you done to Clark?" I said, and I couldn't stop my eyes from stinging in the cold.

I heard Kal-El shift behind me, and I felt the stab of guilt without looking at him.

"I merely claimed my son as my own."

I couldn't accept that, not from this entity which choked my brain with noise, which took my best friend and turned him into something so alien I could barely stand his gaze.

"He's not your son!" I shouted, and here I turned to look Kal-El in the eye. "You're not Jor-El," I said, projecting my voice so it hit all of the recesses in the place, a million ears pricking up. "You're a computer."

I kept the angry tremor out of my voice, just. "And you want him to be just like you: unfeeling, inhuman and bent on doing what someone who died a long time ago and never knew him decided he should do."

I don't consider myself a dualist, and I'm not much for determinism, either.

Kal-El didn't flinch at my words, but something dark passed behind those impenetrable eyes, which betrayed a hurt at my words — or some feeling at least.

"You don't even know him," I said, and the wind had died down again now: my voice echoed through the Fortress, bouncing off crystals and whispering in corners.

And I held out my hand to Kal-El, before Jor-El spoke again, and looked at him right in the eye. And I knew, as I did it, that I was asking him to make the same choice I had made when I chose Kara on the roof: "Trust me," I said, "please."

He looked from my hand to my eyes and cocked his head: suddenly Kal-El, and not Clark. He was studying me again, but this time I knew that inside he was burning, trying to understand me and struggling with his choice. Jor-El remained silent, but I knew he was watching us.

Then Kal-El reached out, and took my hand.

And I was torn between the gut instinct to run, and the overwhelming desire to fling my arms around his neck.

So I did both, stepping backwards and lurching forwards, and slipping in a way which would have been humiliating if I didn't feel so threatened by Jor-El's presence.

But Kal-El grabbed my arms before I hit the floor. I looked up at his face, dark and serious, and he gently pulled me upright.

Then he put his hands on my shoulders, and did something which almost stopped my heart from surprise. He smiled: just a small quirk of the lips — but the softening effect made me think we could be back in Smallville, and I just swallowed.

"Kal-El," boomed out Jor-El, finally. And Kal-El turned again to face the centre of the Fortress, where, I realised for the first time, there was some crystal structure, and stood completely still.

But nothing more was said; I wondered if Jor-El could speak to Kal-El without me hearing. Then Kal-El took me by the hand and pulled me out of the Fortress.

Kara was walking across the snowfield when we emerged.

I saw her exchange a look with Kal-El, who stiffened beside me. I gripped his hand, warm against my cold fingers, and caught Kara's eye. She pressed her lips together, and continued walking, steady, steady, until she reached us.

Then she looked right up at her cousin, and said, "Kal-El." Her voice wavered slightly, and my heart broke for her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kal-El's jaw clench, and felt his grip on my hand tighten.

Then he closed his eyes and breathed in deep, filling his lungs. And when he opened them, his expression was softer, and when he spoke his voice was almost affectionate: "Kara."

Then her face contorted, and she bit her lip. Then she threw her arms around his neck, squeezing her eyes closed over his shoulder. And, as I watched, he lifted his free hand and wrapped it around his little cousin's shoulders.

And I just looked up at the sky, flashing white in my eyes, and asked myself what the hell we were going to do now.


	7. Jimmy Olsen

The rain was falling down in sheets across Metropolis when we got back, hammering against the windows of my apartment and dripping off our hair and clothes onto my kitchen floor.

And I had done it: Kal-El was glowering in the corner on the far side of the room, Kara had hands on hips by the door — the polarisation of our city contained one room, and I was leaning against the counter in the middle, staring at the magazine on my table with Lex's face on the cover.

And for the first time I didn't know what to say.

But I guess I've never been good at expressing my feelings.

It was Kara who spoke first, ringing through the silence with the harsh words that she couldn't keep inside anymore.

"Why do you hate me?"

If Kal-El hadn't reacted this time, I think I might have hated him. For a moment I thought he wouldn't, he was so still. Then he bowed his head, and crossed his arms, and although I couldn't see his face I knew that it affected him.

Kara was trembling.

I wanted to make him answer her, because I had never seen her like this — sad sometimes, angry: I never told her that once I heard her crying in the night, and sat by her bed through her nightmares of Kandor. But everyone is weak in their sleep, and watching Kara so visibly struggle with her pain was a stab in the gut.

It was then that I noticed my knuckles were white, my fingers gripping the counter. None of us were doing much to ease the tension — so dispersed back in the Arctic, now so pent up by four walls and the oppressive beating of rain on my window.

I loosened my grip, breathing out slowly.

And I think we all knew that in a moment, Kara wouldn't be able stop herself crossing the room to shake him, and shout at him, and ask him why — and maybe I couldn't stop myself either.

But it didn't come to that.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking up and staring at Kara.

I half expected one of them to flinch.

He seemed to struggle within himself, and part of me thought maybe he wanted to say more but didn't know how. But that was enough to cause some diffusion: Kara relaxed, and seemed less likely to fly into a rage than to burst into tears, and I don't know which was worse.

And then she got it together, and became the girl who could carry a whole city on her shoulders, like I had blinked and forgotten that sometimes we showed how we were feeling.

"It's OK to be confused," I said, and I didn't know if I was talking to Kal-El or Kara. And I think maybe I was talking to myself, just a little bit.

I looked down at the arms I had crossed, while the only sound in the air was the battering of the rain. Then I looked up, and realised Kara was looking at me, her wide eyes saying the same thing as I could have said to her: I am frightened.

Our plans had not been that well-laid, and they were all unraveled on the floor: knotted up so I couldn't untangle them and figure out what we were supposed to do.

And it would have been so easy to cast about, looking to lay the blame at Kal-El's feet. But I had already done that, and I wasn't so convinced anymore that this was all his fault.

Then I caught his eyes and they whispered me a thank-you: stark against his dark features, and I didn't understand it.

"You don't know what to do anymore than we do, do you?" I asked him, and I could tell from the shift in his stance that the answer was a yes.

That was Kara's cue.

"Don't go back to Lex," she said, her shining blue eyes turned on Kal-El now, leaning forward on the table and looking up at him. "Please".

He almost seemed to move back further into the wall behind him, muscles tensed. I wondered what had happened to give him such a visceral reaction to the girl who was still his cousin. Then he breathed out and relaxed again, and I was so grateful that now he was fighting it.

"Lex made you a promise," I said, watching both of them, "didn't he?" Kal-El looked up at me, tilting his head to the side.

"He promised to help you once you gave him the power to do it," I said.

There was a pause, in which Kara slide back up off the table and crossed her arms. Then Kal-El broke my gaze, and said, "How do you know that, Lois Lane?"

"I know Lex Luthor pretty well," I said.

"We all do," said Kara, shaking her head.

But I'd done this before, I remembered: teaching Clark, who always wanted to find the good, to recognise when people were bad for him.

I pushed myself up from the counter, and rounded the table towards him. "Kal-El," I said, putting my hand on his crossed arm near the elbow, "when you lost your memory, I told you to trust your gut." And at the time, I was still refusing to listen to my own.

I followed his gaze down to where my hand rested, and said, "Do you remember anything about being Clark?"

He uncrossed his arms slightly, and touched his fingers to my hand.

"I remember you," he said, his voice so low it felt like he was whispering into my ear, "Lois Lane."

If I heard anything then, I think it was my heart beating.

I stepped back, almost tripping and banging into the table. Then I closed my eyes and breathed, because this was no time to lose my cool over anything.

"And I remember my cousin," he said.

When I looked at Kara, her jaw was set, and she pursed her lips together. Then she uncrossed her arms and shook her head, and said, "Then why —?"

I think that Kal-El must have understood as well as I did that half our problem was communication. And I realised that it was not because he was alien — because Kara had been brought up on an extrasolar planet and we had never had trouble understanding eachother. And that hurt worst, because whatever had happened to Kal-El had made him broken and dispassionate even by Kryptonian standards.

But he was trying now, because he had realised — and as I watched his face I knew he had — that we might agree, if we just stopped screaming in each other's ears long enough to say what we meant. He was trying to put it in terms that we could grasp.

Then he stood so like Clark and said, "There are two parts of me, saying different things — and it's hard to know which one to trust."

I could see Kara's eyes shining, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to cry. Then she swallowed and pressed her lips together. "I guess it doesn't matter which side you listen to," she said to Kal-El, "you did this to me as Clark."

And before I could blink she was gone.

Kal-El moved to follow her, but I grabbed his arm: "No, don't". He stopped abruptly and we swung around, falling back together against the kitchen side. I breathed in, and he stepped back, looking at me with his head on one side.

"Please don't fly away again," I said, because that was where the trouble had started.

"My cousin —" he said, but I shook my head.

"Kara's lost everything she loved," I said, "she'll come back; she just wants to be alone."

For a moment I thought he would disagree. Then he looked at me with a kind of wonder and said, "I wish I could understand people like you, Lois Lane," — and that broke my heart, because I was not a very empathetic person, and Clark had been the most empathetic person I had ever known.

"Stay with me," I said, and I tried to stop my voice from shaking, "we'll work it out — please don't go back to Lex."

There was no reaction from him at first. Then he said, "I made a promise."

Please forgive me, I thought, for the emotional blackmail.

"When Lex is King," I said, "what will happen to me?"

I was so aware of the rain against the window now. And I couldn't see what effect my words had had: it was so difficult, knowing how explicit to be with Kal-El when he was so other.

But he wasn't that other, because sometimes I felt that I knew him so well: sometimes he was like the edge of Clark, but sometimes I felt I was coming to understand him in his expressions, and sometimes I wondered how well he understood me.

"Lex Luthor said —" he began, but I interrupted.

"No," I said, "what do you believe —" I caught his eye, "what do you trust?"

"I wouldn't let him," he said, burning. "I won't let him."

"Then don't let him," I said, and this time my voice was firm.

And I saw myself struggling against things I had set in motion: boundaries inked and re-inked at every battle, then blurred by the rain.

I saw myself going over the top, never knowing who was in the trenches with me — and I saw Kal-El looking at me in a way I might never understand.

He stepped back and looked up at the ceiling; maybe through it, I wasn't sure. Then he looked back at me, and cocked that strange smile, and nodded: "OK". And I didn't even think about it, I just threw my arms around his neck for the homecoming I should have given Clark.

He smelled so familiar. I closed my eyes, my face in his neck. And then I felt him lift his arms up and wrap them around my shoulders, pulling me into him: his warmth rang all around me with the thundering in his chest, and I felt strangely comforted.

If anyone felt the sands shift with the change in the wind, there was no indication.

Jimmy's greatest lament was his failure to grab a face shot of either of our local superheroes. And I didn't know what to tell him, when I had them both bedded down in my ever-shrinking apartment.

Even the TV stations had only long shots and odd angles to go on. While it no doubt would have suited Lex to have Kal-El's face all over the front page, he had been indifferent to the media, and so had Kara — and neither of them ever stayed for the photo op having saved the day.

But one day I saw Jimmy almost stumble down from the exit to the roof, and I realised what Kara had done.

He sat down at his desk, and I swallowed. Then I locked my computer, stood up, and walked over to him.

He looked up at me then: not betrayed, but hurt, and said, "You knew, didn't you." But it wasn't a question.

I nodded and pulled a chair away from one of the neighbouring desks. "It was up to Kara," I started, but she shook his head.

"No, I'm not talking about that," he said, and he stared at me, "of course it was Kara's decision — like it was Chloe's decision. I'm talking about," he licked his lips, and then said, "I'm talking about how you knew that Clark was back and you didn't even tell me."

And all of a sudden I realised that would hurt Jimmy: of course it would hurt Jimmy, and I had never even thought about it.

"Oh god," I said, "Jimmy —"

"You must think I'm a real idiot," he said, "I thought Superman was so cool, and I was so conflicted about him and Luthorcorp — and it turns out I'm already his best pal and I didn't even know it."

"It's not Clark," I said, with a covert look around the newsroom.

"Look, Lois," he shook his head, "I know you think I'm this dumb kid — but I'm not that stupid."

But when I looked at him again, the galled smile fell off his face. Then he looked away and nodded.

"I don't know what you guys are doing," he said, "but I know you wouldn't do it if you didn't think it was right, Lois."

That was his pledge of allegiance to me, and I knew then that he would follow me to the end of the world any way you look at it. Inside I hoped so much it burned that he wouldn't have to.

And he knew it: he knew that I cared too much to let him in on this strange and dangerous world I was a part of. So he looked at me again, and said, "Just don't cut me out of the loop on stuff like that." And I nodded, because it was all I could do.

And Metropolis was no longer a city split in two, although you wouldn't know it at first. The sand was falling away from under Lex's feet, and I don't know if he even noticed then: whether Kal-El was still meeting him, I didn't know at the time, but I trusted him.

And he was with me, sleeping on my couch: more than once I had caught a glimpse of him through the crack in the door, and stopped to wonder if he dreamed.


	8. Lois Lane

I never thought my life would be like this.

I guess it goes without saying: five years ago I never thought there was a subculture of people with superpowers, ghosts in the ranks of a population who hated them.

I never thought I would move to a small town and stay there.

But then, I never thought I would meet anybody like Clark.

Night after night, even now I went up to the roof of the Daily Planet and watched Metropolis glimmer before me as I laid out battle lines in my head. Sometimes I would hear the soft thud as Kal-El alighted behind me, and we would stand together in silence, watching the city.

He never told me what he was thinking those nights.

He never told me what he was thinking.

I saw him with Kara in the lounge one day, side by side on the couch. Even knowing they could hear my breathing I lingered outside the doorway, and I think they reached some understanding, because he let her pull him into an awkward hug. And when I caught Kara's eye over his shoulder I let myself believe things would work out.

She saw me later in the kitchen when he had flown out and I met her gaze as she sat at the table. I put out a second mug, and dumped some instant coffee in for her.

"He said it's hard for him," she said to me, "not knowing what memories to trust." I sat down across from her then, and she smiled a little, her eyes shining. Then she said, "I told him I know what that feels like."

I thought about what she had told me about her father then, and I reflected that the General had never tried to brainwash or steal memories from me or Lucy.

I heard once that Lex's father forced him to spend time in Belle Reve.

By now the Lex Luthor propaganda machine was in full swing.

He "broke up" Luthorcorp. Thanks to me, the name was associated with things he didn't want the public to think about. In reality the whole company was rebranded Lexcorp, and I think that was almost as much a swipe at his father as it was an attempt to distance himself from his "unfair" and "injust" time served.

And his face was everywhere, promising to save us from the threat posed by the meteor infected, and reform our judicial system. It made me feel sick in the bowels of my stomach, in every mucous-producing cell which flushed poison out of my system. He had the money and the power to put his face wherever he wanted.

Except the Daily Planet. For now.

This was our battle, this was our test. We had fended off all comers in Lex's absence, but this: this was the time for blood to spill.

And I was Boudica. I was raising the sword above my head, and the soldiers were lining up behind me.

And, yes, some lined up faster than others. Burns and his croneys didn't call me Boudica when they talked behind my back, that much I know.

And, somehow, Jimmy Olsen had become my standard bearer.

He showed up at work one day with a black eye and wouldn't tell me what he got it for, but I knew. And I made it clear to everyone that I could make their life hell if I wanted.

But I think Perry had it hardest out of all of us.

He never said anything to me, but I knew took their problems above my head. He was under pressure from above to cave into Lex and from below to take me down a notch, and if he had asked me to step down I would have understood, but he never did.

I started searching his office every day after I found the scotch in his drawer. It became a kind of game between us: futile, because I couldn't stop him drinking if he really wanted, but every time he told me he was a grown-up, damn it, in the voice he used to rattle the interns I knew he wanted me to.

"This is going above and beyond," he said to me once. "They don't give medals for this."

But I just shrugged: "Just put me in your memoirs, Chief." And we left it at that.

It was in Perry's office that Lex sneaked up on me for the second time.

I could tell what kind of day Perry was having by how easy he made this for me, and today was a good day. The filing cabinet was always the first place I looked.

"You're developing a nasty habit for going through other people's things," Lex said, and I froze instinctively.

He was in the doorway behind me, and when I caught his eye he gave me an abrasive smirk.

"Lex," I said, and raised an eyebrow. I set the scotch down on the desk between us, and said, "Drink?"

He laughed then, though his eyes were untouched, and stepped in, closing the door behind him.

The last time I saw this man, I realised, he pushed me out of a window.

But I had the power this time. This was my home territory. I sat down in Perry's chair and leant back, crossing my legs.

"I was actually hoping to speak to your editor," he said. I just smiled, and indicated he should sit in the chair across from me. For a moment, the mask seemed to slip. Then he smiled again, and said, "Well, I have things to discuss with you as well, Miss Lane."

I shook my head at this. "Oh Lex," I said, "After everything we've been through? Call me Lois."

He sat down then, very deliberately, and inclined his head. After a moment, he said, "Does he call you that?" His voice was soft, but he looked at me with meaning. I felt myself swallow and press my lips together before I could stop it.

Then I set my jaw, and raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

"Oh come on Lois," he said, goading me, "I know he's been living with you. How nice of you to take Clark into your..." he paused to give me a half-smile, "home."

I licked my lips, and leaned forward on the desk. Holding his gaze, I said, with finality, "Clark's gone." And it was true.

For a minute, he almost looked like he was going to lose it then, and then he laughed again. "Open your eyes," he said, "Clark is not gone. He's being himself."

"Clark's gone," I repeated. Then I looked down at him through narrowed eyes and said, "Clark would never go back to you after what you did."

Lex looked at me with sudden malice. "Why?" he said, forcefully, "Because of you? Because of you, Lois?" He pushed his chair out and stood up, "You're wrong, because he did." He paused, and then added, "Because you pushed him away, and I didn't."

I met his stare with my own and set my jaw, and he smiled, because he knew that had affected me. He had vocalised everything I was afraid I had done.

"You see, Lois," he said, calmer now, "Clark did choose me over you. Clark will always choose me over you."

I just held his glare. After a moment, I leaned back and said, "What did you come here for, Lex?"

But before he could answer, Perry burst into his office. He took one look at Lex, and then caught my eye across his desk. Then he barked, "Just what the hell is going on here?"

I pushed back his chair and got up. Lex could explain this.

I closed the door behind me, and leant back against it, closing my eyes. "If you heard any of that, Kal-El," I whispered, "Please tell me I'm not wrong."

When I opened my eyes, the newsroom was watching me. I caught Jimmy's eye from where he had looked up, working on his camera, and then someone near me said, "Talking to yourself, Lane? First sign of madness."

I felt my guts twist then for everyone who should be on my side and was working against me. "I hope a reporter didn't say that," I said, glaring around the room, "I'd hate to think any of you thought something that hackneyed could be funny."

There was no laughter. It wasn't funny. None of it was funny.

"What did he want?" I said to Perry, when he passed by my desk an hour later. He just looked at me, and I knew: he wanted what he's always wanted.

"You didn't let him have it," I stated, and from Perry's expression I could exhale knowing it was true.

And when Kal-El landed beside me that night, I turned to look at him.

"Who are you?" I said. I thought I might ask that question once for every star in the sky before I was satisfied with the answer. This time he just looked at me, and I know what he meant: you know who I am, Lois Lane.

I nodded, closed my eyes and breathed out.

Then, when I opened my eyes, I asked, "Did you hear?"

We watched eachother carefully. He struck me so darkly, standing there beneath the globe in his black clothes.

"I heard," he said. Then he paused, and stepped past me, turning his back on me. "If I don't work with Lex Luthor," he said, "the consequences will be dire."

What were Kal-El's goals, I wondered. What did Jor-El want from him? How much did he obey?

What lengths would he go to?

Who did he trust?

"Don't work with him," I said. When he turned to study me, I shook my head and said, "Knowing Lex, the consequences will be more dire if you do."

He just dropped his gaze, and I knew. I was asking Kal-El to make the choice between myself and Lex now.

I wondered if Kal-El was a dualist.

"Lois Lane," he said, looking back up at me with those shining black eyes. "You aren't wrong."

So we marched forward. Jimmy and I collaborated to plan our assault on Lex: covert ops, guerrilla warfare, and, always, the war of propaganda.

I tried to disentangle the association between Kal-El and Lex Luthor in the eyes of the public. "Superman" is a free moral agent, I wrote. And "Superman" sympathises with Lex's so-called "meteor freaks".

More than one person warned me I was carving out a precarious political niche.

And behind the scenes, I was still trying to understand who Kal-El was, and, I think, he was trying to understand me.

Once when I woke in the night, I found him standing beside me in the dark.

"You were crying," he said, reaching out a finger to touch the tear on my cheek. And when my heart burnt at his touch, I realised I had been dreaming about Clark.

Did Boudica cry in her sleep?

Kal-El watched me as I sat up in my bed, his face clearly defined by the shadows and moonlight. Then he smiled at me: a smile that was so unlike Clark, and I felt myself smiling back.

"Do you dream?" I said, and he put his head to one side. "You know," I said, "when you're asleep."

He smiled again, "Yes."

"What do you dream about?" I said.

He gave me a strange look then, and then looked away.

After a pause, he looked back at me and said, "Why do you miss Clark?"

I struggled with words then, trying to quantify my relationship with Clark. "I miss him because," I paused awkwardly, "because he was my friend." When he just continued to watch me, I tried to elaborate: "Clark was — I enjoyed messing with his head. He got frustrated so easily, and flustered. It was —" I paused again there, "It was sweet."

I felt the tears start to burn inside my veins again. Damn it.

"And he was a good guy," I said, forcing everything into the pit of my stomach. And when I looked at Kal-El again, I realised it didn't matter how strong I was.

"I just wish," I said, and my heart beat in time with everything I could have had, "I just wish I'd said —"

But I couldn't.

Something in Kal-El seemed to understand: his wide, soft eyes ever-watching, ever-studying.

"He wishes too," he said.

I looked at him sceptically, "How do you know?"

He smiled again, and this time it was like Clark: like Clark's apologetic smile. "Because it's making you sad," he said, "And he always wanted you to be happy."

After that night, I think Kal-El watched over me as I slept. And I didn't mind being weak in my sleep. But we didn't talk about it in the days, when the three of us: Kal-El, Kara and I, flew off to fight our separate battles.

And then Chloe showed up.


	9. Chloe Sullivan

Sometimes you don't know how far into abnormal your situation has gotten until normal turns up on your doorstep.

And normal's name, this time, was Chloe Sullivan.

I didn't know what to say when I opened the door and saw her standing there, hair tied back and shining in the light from the hall. She grinned at me — "Hey, Lo!" — and my mind shifted gears.

After a moment, she raised her eyebrows. "You gonna let me in?"

I blinked, and shook it off. Then I let myself smile, and said, "Sorry, Chlo." As she stepped in, I closed the door and, in a small-talky tone I hadn't affected in a while, asked, "How was your trip?"

Six months before any of this started, six months before I knew my name could hold power, Chloe had left on a vaguely-directed trip across America.

"It's time I got away from Smallville," she had said to me, by way of explanation, and that was all. I think Jimmy had understood better than I had, but I didn't mention her name around him anyway.

When I turned to look at her, she gave me an instant of the eyes-half-narrowed almost-frown which meant she was studying me, then shrugged her shoulders and said, "Multi-faceted."

It was my turn to study her.

I made some coffee and we sat down in my lounge, my mind still stirring a million colours and ideas about what I should tell her — what I could tell her. After a moment, I let out my breath and smiled at her. "I missed you, Chlo."

She grinned at me sidelong then, "You too, Lois." She paused, and then added, "It really wasn't the same without you and your, uh, 'acerbic wit'."

I raised an eyebrow. "Chloe, I think you have more than enough of that to go around."

It was strange, the way we just settled back into this. Chloe was the cousin who had been my rock when I was kid and the world moved around me with my father's transfers. I couldn't forget that, and I couldn't forget that it was her who had first made me write journalistically, even if it later caused some tension I never understood.

"So how're you?" she said. "I didn't get to keep up with your reporting," she paused there, "although I did hear something on the news earlier about you. You and your relationship with —" she paused, and looked up over my shoulder, "Clark!"

The last syllable was raised, and I knew. I knew, before I looked behind me, that Kal-El was standing in the doorway.

He was watching us, but when Chloe called out the name of the man he had been he showed no sign that it affected him, and when she threw her arms around his neck he just stood there, as if she weren't there at all.

My heart broke a little, knowing I would have to force the same revelation on Chloe, who had known Clark longest, as I had had to make. I looked desperately at Kal-El, whose wide, dark eyes were watching me over Chloe's shoulder, and willed him to react.

And when he didn't, I wondered if he even knew what to do when someone hugs you.

"Clark?" came Chloe's voice, as she stepped back. He looked then at her upturned face, and I could imagine she was frowning. She said again, firmer, "Clark."

"Chloe," I said, standing up. As she looked back at me with confusion, I pressed my lips together, and then said, "It's not Clark."

She stepped back then, and looked from me to Kal-El.

Then she said, in what seemed like a much calmer tone than the one I had used in a similar situation, "OK. Someone tell me what's going on before I start googling identity theft." She paused, and then added, "Again."

And if it hadn't been for this, I might not have realised, and maybe things would have been different: maybe things would have been worse.

When I looked at her face I realised the expression was more disquieted than her tone of voice.

I pulled her quietly into the kitchen, with a request for Kal-El to let me talk to her alone. She leaned against the cabinet and chewed her thumbnail.

"OK," she said, after a moment, "I don't think it's Bizarro, because he wouldn't let on that he wasn't Clark. And if it was Clark dosed on some kind of —" she caught my eye, and then finished evasively, "well he wouldn't be so docile in either case."

I stared at her. "Bizarro?"

She shook her head. "Some super-juiced phantom clone running around, pretending to be Clark a while back."

Super-juiced? I crossed my arms, and looked at her carefully. And then it became so clear, as if the past four years had fallen into place. "You knew," I said, slowly, "didn't you?" When she just raised her eyebrows, I said, "About Clark — that he's an alien."

She stared at me then, and said, "Lois, what is going on?"

And somewhere, somewhere deep inside of me I felt everything I had kept under my skin explode. "Clark's gone," I said, forcefully, "he's gone and he's never coming back. And the person in there," I pointed in the general direction of the lounge, "is who came back instead."

I shook my head. "Kal-El." And burnt out, and let myself fall back against the door.

And for some reason, I felt that Kal-El might be leaning back against the other side. And maybe he was.

I knew he was listening.

"Or maybe it is Bizarro," I added, and then shook my head because I knew it wasn't true. "I don't even know what's going on."

Chloe was uncharacteristically silent, watching me and frowning.

"I'm guessing you know who Jor-El is," I said, and when she nodded, I shrugged. "Kara and I are working under the assumption that Kal-El is the product of something Jor-El did to Clark."

She nodded, and bit her lip. "Does he remember anything?" she said, and I think what she meant was "Does he remember me?" I thought back to their exchange, and the failed hug, and gave her a weak smile.

"He remembers some things," I said, and what I meant was "I don't know."

She blinked then, and I think it was tears she was blinking back. Then she forced a smile and said, "Irony's a bitch."

We went out after that — Kal-El was gone when I opened the door to the kitchen.

The apartment felt oppressive, and tense: I think it always had, but Chloe's presence made me feel it with the sharp contrast against her initial glee to be back. So we went out, and sat in a dive of a fast food restaurant with hamburgers which were more like slabs of fat going cold in front of us.

And I felt normal again, just for a moment.

And I realised I had to say: "Jimmy knows." Chloe looked up at me, her expression blank but her mouth falling open.

"Kara told him," I said, and I knew what that would mean to Chloe.

She nodded slowly, and pressed her lips together. "Wow."

Again, I didn't know what to say. I always know what to say.

Part of me wanted to apologise, as if this were all somehow my fault.

"Lois," Chloe said, after a moment, "there's something I guess I've wanted to tell you."

I looked at her.

She breathed in, and then bit her lip. "OK," she said, "when I was away, I spent a bit of time volunteering at a crisis centre." She became more subdued then, "I spent so much time telling Clark to save the world," she said, "be a hero. But when I —"

She shook her head. I wondered what her friendship with Clark had been like: so much of it seemed to hinge on things I could never have seen.

"I worked with some amazing people." She said. "And I saw the kind of wounds even I can't heal."

I wasn't sure what that meant.

"A couple of times," she said, "people would call and they'd done something drastic already. And sometimes I would find them in the hospital afterwards. I'd go, while they were sleeping so they wouldn't know," she paused, and looked at me. Her bottom lip shook a little bit, "and I'd heal the things I could."

I said nothing, but now I think I knew what she was telling me.

"I'm a meteor freak," she said.

Normal's name was not Chloe Sullivan.

"What would you have done if you got caught?" I said, like I had ever had a plan for that eventuality.

She shrugged. "We've done worse things and not gotten caught." Her lips twitched, and she said, seriously, "I didn't want people to be sick all their lives because they had a hard time and did something they regret."

But I felt like there was something else she wasn't adding, because she looked away then.

"There must be more like you," I said. "More people who use their power to help — people we don't see, people who are invisible because we don't run across them like the ones who —"

I broke off there. My mouth always ran away with my tact.

Chloe gave me a knowing look then. "You can say it," she said with a smile, "the ones who go crazy."

Then she laughed. "It's funny," she said. "All this time I thought my mom was crazy and that it's in my genes — then it turns out she's not, not really, but I'm a meteor freak and they tend to psychosis like no other segment of the population."

I gave her a wry smile, and shrugged. "Well, I'm not much for determinism."

I offered Chloe a bed at my apartment, but she pointed out that "a bed" was effectively floor space: the place was designed for one person, and it currently housed three. She took a room in a hotel instead — temporarily, she said — and I was surprised, but she didn't come straight back to the Daily Planet.

I know she saw Jimmy, but neither one of them told me what passed between them, and it was none of my business anyway.

And I asked Kal-El to act as though he remembered her, or at least cared. And he seemed to try, but after that initial encounter she saw right through him anyway.

And when Chloe and I weren't faking normalcy, I think she was at her laptop, winding her way through Luthorcorp virtual security, one keystroke at a time.

I felt I had a more direct route.

"Lex Luthor will expect you," Kal-El said to me, when he saw me looking at lists of Luthorcorp properties.

"I'll be fine," I said.

"Lois,"

My breath hitched in my throat. When I turned to look at him, he just smiled the shadow of a smile. "I will listen for you."

"You're always listening," I said, and he nodded. Then he did something that shocked me.

He hugged me.

I felt his arms around my shoulders, reminiscent of the times when I had hugged him, and all the times I hugged Clark — but this was the first time, this was the first time either of them had pulled me in. And I wasn't sure what to do, standing there stiff with his warm breath stirring my hair.

I closed my eyes, and ran my hands up his back to grasp his shoulders.

"Be careful," he said, "Lois Lane."


	10. Bizarro

Jimmy Olsen would die on the battlefield for me.

He never said it, but I knew when I overheard him defend me against those like Burns that it was true: he believed in my ideology, he looked to me as a leader.

And with people like Burns around, sometimes it felt like he was the only person in this place who could.

They were oldschool reporters: relics of the fourth estate, and some days I felt they could only have found female leadership palateable under a woman who at least had the good grace to be "feminine" about it.

I didn't have time to pander to that insecurity.

I had to take all my time not to mess up again. This time, it couldn't just be me, rummaging blindly through Lex's files for something — anything — which, although I never admitted it to myself at the time, I had desperately hoped might bring Clark back.

That was no longer my objective.

I had to accept that I would never see him again.

I delineated battle plans with Jimmy after hours. Chloe cut herself in on what we were doing — monitering activity at Lexcorp: we knew which facilities had a lot of human traffic; we knew which facilities were heavily protected.

Perry's office is not soundproofed. Perry likes to hear what is happening in the newsroom.

So I heard every word of passed between Chloe and Jimmy while I was in there, rummaging through his drawers, one evening.

"You're not an angel," he said to her, as if he had just worked something out.

I set the bottle quietly down on Perry's desk.

In my mind's eye, I saw Chloe looking at Jimmy with her eyebrows raised. Then she said something, quiet, so I didn't quite catch it it. I suppose Jimmy was closer to the office at the time.

"When you told me," he said, "what you did, I thought — you appear at people's bedsides when they're sick, and you perform miracles: you're an angel. But you —"

And I realised Chloe must have told him, like Kara had told her secret before her.

"No," said Chloe, and I think she had crossed the room to join Jimmy. I imagined them leaning together against one of the desks, almost, almost touching. "No," she repeated, "I'm not. Maybe some people think I am, when they half-open their eyes, before they go back to sleep. I don't know. All I know is, I used to do that to —" there was a pause, "I used to do that to Clark."

Was that why their relationship had changed, I wondered.

"You're a person," said Jimmy, and he sounded slightly subdued. "I get it."

I leant back in Perry's chair, fingering the neck of the bottle. There were times when I wanted to crack open Perry's scotch myself: I wasn't a recovered alcoholic, I could do it if I wanted — but I felt there was some show of solidarity with him in not drinking.

After a long pause, Chloe said, and I almost didn't catch it, her voice was so low: "I know you do, Jimmy."

And I knew Jimmy "got it" about Kara, too.

She was the city's favoured superhero.

"Superman" was just too ambiguous: too shrouded in mystery. I didn't need Kara to win Metropolis's love now that Kal-El was with us, but she won it anyway — with ease and with pleasure.

And, where Kara was open, Kal-El was taciturn. It made the people uneasy.

And me.

I remembered our first meeting, when he pulled me up to the roof of my apartment building and showed me the void where his world used to be. I remembered what he had told me then.

And I decided to ask him, one night, when we were up on the roof of the Daily Planet.

He seemed to struggle with an answer. I imagined two halves of himself splitting up inside him and fighting it out: I saw his jaw twitch; I knew this was difficult.

I laid my hand on his arm, and said, "I know you don't know what to think — how much of you is Jor-El." He looked down at my face, and I just said, "Just tell me what you want. The first thing you think of."

"I want —" he paused, and then looked up into that empty space in the sky, "I want my people back." Then he looked back at me, and something which looked like ache glinted in his eyes, "But I can't have them."

"You wanted a resurrection," I said.

"I wanted a resurrection," he repeated. Then his expression changed, and he said, "But not at the expense of your people. Now. I understand —" he faltered there, and looked away again.

Had I changed him, I wondered, or had he always been like this — had I misunderstood?

But it was a false dichotomy, and I realised I would never know.

And I might never know who he was in relation to Clark. I don't think he even knew.

"There is so much on Earth — worth protecting," he said, and when he looked at me, I thought something was calling out from those eyes in a language I almost understood.

We were ready.

Our pieces were in place: Jimmy and I were ready to go behind enemy lines.

Chloe was our base support. Kara would keep watch from the skies. And Kal-El was a force unto himself: Kal-El was always listening.

The idea bothered me.

Kal-El may have been free of our social doctrines, but it still felt unsettlingly to me like a man had decided I needed looking after.

But then, Kal-El had accepted my leadership after his own fashion — and when I realised he was listening for everybody, I made my peace with it.

It was a facility just outside Smallville: it didn't get a lot of traffic, but we had ascertained that it was a place frequented by the Lexcorp higher-ups: Lex's most trusted, if you could say he trusted anybody.

I had asked Kal-El about it, and he had just nodded.

So I went with the boy who would follow me into the bowels of Hell and back, though I inwardly made a promise to Chloe, or Kara, that he wouldn't have to.

"You'd better talk to Perry about getting me that raise," he half-joked, looking sidelong at me as I swiped the mocked-up access card Chloe had made for us.

"If you do good I'll get you a medal," I replied. I could almost hear his heart beating.

From there on out it was silence.

We had the blueprints. I had a basic idea of where we were going. Jimmy and Chloe had together set up a commlink so that she could sit in my tiny kitchen, surrounded by electronics, and wait for a Mayday.

Time seemed to warp and slow around us. Every corridor was the same, every encounter with a member of staff set my nerves on edge. From time to time I would sneak a look at Jimmy, and each time his face was more ashen.

Down the steps. According to the plans, the main laboratory was here: I dreaded what we would find.

Wes was engineered in a place like this, I realised. My aunt was experimented on in one of these labs. And Clark —

Oh god, Clark.

Jimmy grabbed my shoulder, and I realised I had lurched forwards. We exchanged a glance of — what? Horror.

This room was empty, almost, except for five large vats — and in the five large vats, five Clarks.

My guts burnt.

I grimaced, and felt myself fall onto my hands and knees, heaving. Jimmy grabbed me from behind, pulling my hair out of my face: I was grateful for the gesture.

I breathed slowly when I was done, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

I could just stomach a second look.

And there they were. Inert. Unchanging. I stepped forwards, and put my hand against the glass of the one closest to me. He didn't move: his face remained expressionless, his eyes closed.

I wondered if he dreamed.

"This is sick," said Jimmy. "This is sick."

"That's Lex Luthor," I said, with vitriol.

I let my hand slide from the glass and gathered my composure. "Jimmy," I said, turning and catching his eye, "get your camera out."

For a moment he stared at me, as unmoving as each suspended Clark, then he fumbled in his pocket for the spy camera he'd brought for the evidence. I took a deep breath to clear my lungs of the sick feeling, and tapped my eye.

"Chloe," I said, "do you have anything?"

"Not much," came her voice, crackling over the radio. "Anything your end?"

I looked back over my shoulder at the eerie sleeping Clarks. "Oh yeah," I said, pursing my lips, "but you'll have to see it to believe it."

"You'd better get out of there."

I looked back over my shoulder at Jimmy, who nodded, and gave me a weak smile. "Noted."

What the fuck is this?

Jimmy looked as sick as I had felt. More than once, glancing over at him on the way back, I wanted to tell him to cheer up — but I couldn't see what there was to be cheerful about.

And I wondered what this had to do with Kal-El. Were we wrong about him? Was he some failed Luthorcorp experiment? — but what about his involvement with Jor-El?

I had my priorities.

My head was pounding. I pushed past Chloe and pulled out the kitchen drawers, spilling their contents on the floor, before finally turning up the painkillers. Chloe looked from me to Jimmy worriedly.

"Where's Kara?" I said with urgency.

"Here." I looked over my shoulder: Kara had materialised in the hall. She was paler than I thought a Kryptonian could be, and I realised she had been watching us — she had seen what we had seen.

Jimmy wordlessly plugged his camera into Chloe's laptop.

I saw the blood drain from her face and grabbed the nearest basin. She took it, and held it in her lap, but just about managed to hold it together, taking a deep breath and then turning her wide, glassy eyes on me.

I didn't know what to say.

None of us did.

"Bizarro," Chloe said eventually. I looked at her. She let her gaze dart around the circle before saying, "Bizarro was a phantom who replicated Clark's body. It happened on Lex's watch, in one of his labs."

I realised what she was getting at.

"You think Lex has found out how it happened," I said, slowly, "and decided to..."

The corner of Chloe's mouth twitched. I knew what that meant.

I couldn't keep my thoughts to myself, rolling and bursting through me. I had to give voice: "What about Kal-El."

Chloe shrugged, pursing her lips, but Kara —

"No," she said, and her eyes glinted. She looked at me. "We know who he is," she said. "We found him in the Fortress."

"Look, Kara," said Chloe, "I'm sorry about Clark, but it really looks as if —"

But it was Jimmy who interrupted her. "Chloe," he said gently, and she looked at him, "I think you're jumping to conclusions."

This could get out of hand.

I decided to step in before things escalated. "Guys," I said. Three faces turned to me for answers: three eyes looked at me askance. I deflected, turned to Chloe: "Can we tell the difference?"

And it hurt me to ask that, because I knew Kal-El was listening. I want to trust you, I thought: I do.

She bit her lip apologetically, and then shrugged and said, "The meteor rock."

"No." Kara again.

"It's the only way of knowing," said Chloe. She looked from Kara to me, and said, "The meteor rock makes Bizarro stronger, and it hurts Clark."

I stared at her.

And it wasn't her.

I saw Kal-El before me, his wide eyes full of pain: an echo of the betrayal I had made earlier, amplified, screaming.

My heart was burning. There was blood on my hands.

"Are you serious?" I said, and I heard my voice as a whisper. "I don't want to do either of those things."

His hands were on my shoulders, steadying me.

I closed my eyes. The vision faded.

"No," I said. "I asked him if he stole bodies and he said no."

Chloe looked at me sceptically.

"He can't lie." I said, and I knew it: it was a physical impossibility.

There was an extended silence, and then Jimmy said, "So we're trusting Kal-El?"

"Yes," I said.

I knew it would be good enough for Jimmy.

Kal-El came into my bedroom again that night. I had lain awake with my malformed fear of what was going to happen next: afraid to take the sleeping pills, afraid to lock myself into a nightmare with those Clarklike creatures — afraid in a way which cut down into my bones, in a way I couldn't admit.

I was glad of the company.

I swung my legs over the side of my bed and indicated that he should sit next to me, and we sat together, looking forward at the wall across from us.

"Thankyou, Lois Lane," he said, after a long pause.

And that was OK.

I looked sidelong at him. His face was defined in the moonlight: a shadowy hollow beneath his cheekbone, the sharp line of his jaw. Part of his hair had fallen out of place and, without thinking I reached out to fix it.

I almost twitched my hand away when I realised what I was doing — almost, but didn't, running my finger along his hairline, tucking the stray hair behind his ear.

He turned his head to look at me, and I dropped my hand with an awkward smile.

"Why do you always call me Lois Lane?" I said, deflecting.

He looked so confused. "It's your name," he said.

"Here, on Ear—" I paused, and then corrected, "In America, you don't call your friends by their full names."

He seemed to absorb this, looking back at the wall. "Then," he said, "what should I call you?"

"Lois," I said. "Just call me Lois."

He nodded, slowly, and then looked back at me. "Then," he said — and he raised his hand, brushing his fingers down the side of my face — "you should just call me Kal."

Somehow, that burned inside me.

I closed my eyes, and caught my breath.

"What is Lex Luthor going to do?" he said, dropping his hand and looking away again.

And I noted that he used Lex's full name.

"I don't know," I said. "But he's going to regret it."

"I'm sorry," he said, his eyes cast down. I looked at the curve of his back, and saw the guilt in his features. He looked at me. "It was my DNA."

But I had already realised that — and how could I blame him?

"It's not your fault," I said.

But I saw in his face, before he looked away again, that he didn't believe me, and all of a sudden I was so angry. "No," I said, "Lex Luthor blames everyone else for his misdeeds — but they're all him. All."

"Lois —" he began, and for a moment he sounded so weak.

I wanted him to be strong. And, just like he had pulled me in when I least expected, I found my fingers running up his back, and my arm wrapping itself around his shoulder.

He leaned into me, so naturally, and I closed my eyes.

There were no nightmares.


	11. The Supermen

It was not a question of what, but when.

At first I hadn't understood, when Chloe asked with her eyes wide why I thought Lex would want to clone Clark, how she couldn't know. I didn't understand how it wasn't obvious to her — how it wasn't obvious to Kara, who had seen into Lex's obsession, who knew every twisted way he thought of Clark.

I wanted to say it: he wants Clark on his side any way he can have him. And —

"They're his contingency," I had said, unscrewing the lid to the coffee jar, "he knows he'll never take office, not legally."

The jar was empty. I set it back down on the counter. When this is over, I thought, I should cut back. If this is over.

Jimmy had broken open an old camera and the pieces were scattered over my kitchen table. I was starting to understand that Jimmy Olsen was the kind of person who needed his hands to be busy when his mind was in turmoil. But he had put his screwdriver down now, and looked up at me, his mouth open.

"What are you saying?" he said.

I leant back against my counter, arms crossed.

"Nobody commissions a weapon unless they think they'll have to use it," I said, "and we're at war: Lex knows it. His supporters make a lot of noise, and send a lot of death threats, but he knows he'll never hold office."

I had snorted, there, shaking my head and added, "He's delusional, not stupid."

And when I looked at each of them individually, I knew they all understood what I was saying. Lex will take power by force — the question was when.

And maybe it was a question of what: what are we going to do to stop him?

We couldn't be sure whether Lex knew that Jimmy and I had been on his base, but I believed he knew.

I believed he had expected me to break in. Remembering our confrontation at the Planet, part of me felt he had wanted it, wanted me to see, wanted me to choke up all the memories he had tried to distort. And he thought he could afford that, because Lex always underestimated me.

Kara almost stopped talking after that conversation, almost stopped seeing us, almost stopped coming back at night. I knew that she slept on the edge of space, imagining, wondering what part she would play when the reckoning came.

But when she turned her eyes on me, speckled with the dust of a dead world, sometimes I remembered that she was only like human. And then I knew, even if she didn't, that she would stand shoulder to shoulder with Kal-El — my Kal — and fight.

I knew it, and sometimes I thought I saw the sky flecked with their blood.

Lexcorp was in lockdown.

We talked about what to do, in clandestine meetings at the Daily Planet — now some base of operations — and I caught the darkened eyes of Burns and his ilk, but it didn't matter.

The one battle I felt we were winning was that for the Planet's benediction: we had fought so hard to report objectively, and every time I saw the facts go out untouched by corruption I felt strong again, if only for a moment.

We were so powerless. Even if we could have gotten back into Lexcorp, we knew there was nothing we could do, and in the end it came down to one thing: we had to wait. And —

"Blue kryptonite," Chloe said to me one day, sitting by my desk at the Planet. She didn't work there, but Perry would turn a blind — if gruff — eye for all the favours I had done him.

My hands hovered over the keyboard, and I turned my head to look at her. "Blue kryptonite?"

She pursed her lips, and said, "The last time we came across any of that stuff it robbed Clark of his powers, but —" she gave me a look before I could interject, "but it's also one of Bizarro's weaknesses." She paused, and then added, "Also sunlight, but I don't think it's a good idea to timelock our defence. I've seen too many vampire movies where —"

"OK." This time I did cut across her. "So you'll probably be able to pick up some of this stuff in Smallville like any other meteor rock, right?"

Chloe's look was almost apologetic, as if this were somehow her fault: "Not... quite," she said. "I don't think any of it came down with the red and green kryptonite. The blue K we ran across — well, it's a long story, but the thing is, I think we're going to have to go to the Fortress."

I raised an eyebrow, "We?" but she barely acknowledged that I had said anything.

"I spoke to Kara before coming here, and —"

What was this? The Bizarro universe?

"Wait," I said, frowning at her, "you and Kara?"

She shrugged, and looked a little over my shoulder to where Jimmy was working at his desk. "Well, I don't have any connection to Jor-El," she said, "and Kara can't handle the blue K — if there even is any there."

Chloe's mind worked in strange leaps of logic. I could see them laid out before me, bound together by the most tenuous sinew of assumption: one, Bizarro was affected by blue kryptonite, therefore these Bizarro/Clark maybe-facsimiles will be; two, Jor-El seemed omnipotent, therefore we could get blue kryptonite from the Fortress. Oh Chloe, none of this is guaranteed.

And I wasn't happy with the idea of Chloe and Kara — of all people — having to deal with Jor-El: Jor-El who had once saved my life, Jor-El who had once echoed painfully through my skull.

I wasn't happy with it, but I didn't try to stop it, because it was the closest thing we had to a plan.

That was the day I noticed, over Chloe's shoulder, that Kal-El was hugging his own cousin good-bye without hesitation.

And I think Lex was watching us, because that was the night he chose to make the war literal.

I had a few moments on the roof with Kal-El that evening when Kara and Chloe had left. I thought that the air was singing with anticipation, but maybe I just thought that because we felt so cautious now that they had gone — like I said, I'm not much for determinism, and I trust my gut, but not to predict the future.

The way Kal-El stood still, silhouetted against the greying sky, I knew he was conflicted about their mission as well. But rather than say anything, this time I just walked over to stand beside him. And, before I registered what I was doing, I slipped my fingers through his in solace.

It was just a few moments.

Then he turned his head, suddenly, and his muscles tensed.

"What is it?" I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at me.

"People are crying," he said, "and asking me why." He looked back over the horizon, and said, his voice low, "I think it's starting."

He looked back at me again, asking permission to leave. And knowing that his weakness was their strength, he seemed so stripped naked to me in the fading light. I wanted to say no: let me protect you — but there were more lives at stake than just Kal-El's.

So I said, "Go," though I loathed it. "Just go."

He paused for a moment, and looked at me in the way I had just looked at him. Then he looked away, and stepped up onto the ledge. "Stay strong, Lois," he said.

And then I was alone.

I wondered if I would ever see him again.

But I was the soldier, and I was not going to let Kal-El fight alone on the front lines.

Chloe and Kara would be back when they were back: I couldn't count on them even having the blue kryptonite when they returned, or on it working if they did. I had to stop this.

The Planet building was empty except for cleaning staff when I returned from the roof.

Perry kept a handgun in the fake bottom of his desk drawer. When my fingers had brushed against the cool metal that first time, I had decided not to mention it. Although, from the meaning in some of the looks Perry shot me, I had a feeling he knew I'd found it.

I prefer unarmed combat on principle, but I could forgive an old man for wanting a sense of security when so many people wanted him dead. And this time, I was willing to go into battle with a little backup, knowng my enemy had weapons which were so much worse: it was a situation for situational morality; or, at least, that's how I rationalised what I was going to do next.

I called Perry from the office and told him to bring everybody back in. This was also a situation for unbiased news coverage, and the Planet staff were the only people I trusted in Metropolis to provide anything close.

Something in my tone prevented Perry from asking too many questions, although I knew he'd put me in the hotseat later. For now, I had my commander's trust, and that was all that mattered.

The night seemed absurdly calm when I stepped out of the Planet building. I turned my face to the sky, now edged with night, but I couldn't see Kal-El or any of Lex's Bizarros.

I thought I heard something, but it was almost indiscernable.

Maybe it was better that way.

Now that it was starting, it didn't seem such a barrier that Lexcorp was in lockdown. In reality, I was ready to go one step further to jump the fence.

There was one security guard on the ground floor reception at Lexcorp HQ. I disabled him without using the gun, stripping him of his keycard.

This was crazy: even for me this was reckless.

I almost stopped then and went back to the Planet to join ranks with the other impartial observers — but then I heard a crack in the sky, and I thought of Kal: saw him in my mind's eye, saw his blood splattered across the clouds.

And he was fighting outnumbered to protect "my people". Were they just people to him now?

Jimmy would be back at the office by now, and somehow I knew he had taken some degree of control: somehow I knew he was influencing events, unseen, from within ranks. And Perry, Perry White was a leader I never could have hoped for. How could I go back? What would I do?

I had to try.

Lex was in Lexcorp HQ, somehow I knew he would choose that building to witness the destruction — he would call it "transformation" — of a city which had given him no reason for love. I knew him so well.

Whether he heard me enter, at first he gave no indication. He was stood behind his desk, looking out over Metropolis through the large window at the back of his office.

From where I was stood, I could see the whole skyline, and several black dots, which, I guessed, were the Bizarros — and Kal-El — locked in a dance whose true beauty was destruction. How many casualties? How many fatalities would the Planet report? I could just see that parts of the city were on fire already: charring the heart of Metropolis.

And it had seemed so quiet on the way here.

I held the gun firm in both hands and pointed it at Lex's head.

This wasn't him catching me in his office. This time I had the power.

"I don't know what you thought you could achieve, Lex," I said, my voice low, biting, "but it ends now."

He half-turned, and I indicated he should face me, back to the wall. He almost smiled: a dark smile for all his sins commited. When he spoke, his voice was too calm for somebody whose life was at stake: "This is a revolution, Lois."

I felt my lips curl up, taking three steps to close the gap. We were parallel to the window now, and I was in control. I raised an eyebrow, and tried to keep my voice even. "So," I said, "who knew you'd be first against the wall when the revolution came?"

He laughed then: a sharp, sick laugh. "You always had a great sense of humour, Lois," he said. Then he indicated the window, now to his right, "Look."

It was eerie, watching a battle take place and hearing and feeling nothing. We were untouched observers.

"Your 'Superman' is outnumbered by my gods," he said. "And when the dust settles, and I am in charge, I will make the world a much better place to be."

My stomach wrenched. "And thanks to your propaganda machine," I said, "the people are almost ready for the idea. Right?" He could believe it all he wanted. I knew there were more Olsens than Burnses in the general population. There had to be.

He cocked his head, still feigning nonchalance. "Are you really going to shoot me Lois?"

How did we get like this?

I never liked Lex.

"I won't have to," I adjusted my grip on the gun, "if you stop this. I know you can."

He had more to lose than I did. Using the Bizarros to seize Metropolis was only a means to an end, an end he was egotistical enough to believe only he could achieve — whether he believed in what he was doing as an ideology, his plan was incomplete. I believed he couldn't stand the thought of dying now.

But it was better for me if he stopped things, and he knew that bought him time.

My finger itched: I wanted to crack my knuckles. Instead I tightened my grip on the gun and waited for his answer.

I saw his chest expand, heard the intake of breath —

Two of the black dots collided in the sky. One fell towards the centre of Metropolis.

A moment of silence.

"Oh no," said Lex, sardonically, "I hope Clark's OK."

Then the Earth seemed to fall out from under my feet. I swayed and then slammed into the desk, my shoulder colliding hard with the corner.

I tried to steady my breathing against the pain as the world came back into view. Somebody was laughing. What was so funny?

Lex was grinning down the barrel of my gun.

I looked dumbly at my empty hands, realising I was sitting on the floor, leant back against the desk. I had dropped the gun in my pain.

I cracked my knuckles. If this was it, then I was getting that out of the way.

"Lois," he said, and his voice was so calm it chilled me, "I'll put flowers on your grave every year." Then he squeezed the trigger, and I closed my eyes.

They say that, when you die, the last moments of your life take an eternity to pass.

I wouldn't know.

It was at the sound of gagging that I opened my eyes again.

Kal-El. How had he?

His hand was around Lex's neck, choking him. The part of myself I'm not proud of wondered why he hadn't already snapped his neck.

I stumbled to my feet, almost falling against the desk, and grabbed Kal-El's hand.

The last time I had done anything like this, Alicia had died.

"Stop," I said, pulling at his shirt.

He didn't look at me.

I threw all my weight into trying to pull him back, but he stood, still and solid as a statue, holding Lex up by the neck. I could see he was hurt, but burning on whatever Kryptonians had for adrenaline — and even broken, he had the strength of ten.

I craned my neck up to speak into his ear, desperation lining the pit of my stomach: "Please stop, Kal."

He glanced back over his shoulder at me, and said, "Why, Lois?" His voice hardened, and his eyes burned, as he looked back at Lex. "He tried to kill you."

But Kal-El hadn't killed Lex yet and, just like I knew Perry wanted me to search his office every evening, I knew Kal wanted a reason not to choke the last breath up from Lex's lungs.

And I only had one reason to give.

The pain was spreading from my shoulder. I clutched his shirt, "Clark would hate me if I let you kill him."

Those wide eyes were turned on me again, jaded comprehension seeping in at the edges. Then he nodded, and loosened his grip on Lex, who fell in a heap to the ground.

He had a pulse, and he was breathing.

"I saw you die," I said, looking up at Kal, "I saw you die."

I saw then for the first time the bruises lining his jaw, the blood on his face: it shook me. He fell back against the desk.

"One of them," was all he said, and I realised: he had come out on top of that collision. He looked up at me then, and I saw some familiar emotion in his eyes. "I nearly didn't —" he began, "I was nearly too late." He opened his hand, and I saw the flattened bullet, and knew what he was saying: I nearly died.

"I'm OK," I said, although my shoulder was immobile.

He nodded, and stood again. He was visibly better, but moved stiffly. "I should go."

"You'll die," I said, pained. I already lost Clark. I already thought I lost Kal-El.

"Kara will be back," he said, "I can hear her. But the people —"

I got it. "OK," I said, standing up and looking at him with meaning.

His eyes were wistful. "Lois," he said, and reached out, brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear. Deep inside, I hoped it wasn't the last good-bye between us.

It was Jimmy I called to help me deal with Lex: so powerful, now crumpled on the floor under the weight of his own body. I couldn't get him to stop this. I couldn't save the world, not yet.

Jimmy's arm was smeared with blood when he ducked in the room. "Not mine," he said with a weak smile, and somehow I knew the person it had belonged to was dead. "They're rioting," he said, "The cops are trying to deal with it."

I felt so weak: Lex, look what you've done. And for what?

Jimmy looked from Lex, propped up against one of the desks, to me and gave me a congratulatory grin: so you captured the enemy base.

"When do you think the police will show up?" I asked, "Or the medics?"

He winced, and then shrugged.

"That soon," I acknowledged, then sighed. "Kara and Chloe?"

He shook his head. I looked from Lex, to Jimmy, to the gun on the floor. Then I thought of all the people who were dying in Lex's misguided attempts to take control of the city and I grabbed the gun, thrusting it into Jimmy's hands.

"You watch him," I said. "Tie him to the desk or something. I'm going to wait back at the Planet."

He looked from the gun in his hands to me, and gave me a pained look. I smiled and patted him on the shoulder, "You can do it, Jimmy. Make me proud."

I slipped along the back alleys on my return to the Planet: on the way to Lexcorp I had stayed with the crowds, now I wanted to avoid them. I could tell from the shouts and bitter smell of burning that Jimmy was right: people were scared, people were rioting.

Metropolis always rose again but, like Clark, it would be different after this. I didn't know what to think about that.

At first glance the newsroom was in chaos, but it was a chaos that I recognised: layer upon layer of movement revealed a kind of organisation in the madness. We were trying to cope with the constant influx of news — and, stiff and silent, Perry White kept a watching eye over everything.

Several pairs of eyes turned on me as I stalked over to my desk, and a kind of hush fell across part of the newsroom. There was blood smeared across my fingers — from Jimmy's arm, from Kal-El — but they weren't staring at my hands.

I wondered what they suspected of me. Did they think I was guilty of this, because I had known? Because I had been a friend to Superman?

I looked over my shoulder at one of the televisions we had streaming live news.

Every an event was an opportunity for Lex to practise his spin.

There was a blurred picture of one of the Bizarros up on the screen — and on his chest, what looked like the Daily Planet insignia. Did Lex really think people would believe we were behind this? We were a news, not a political organisation.

But then we had many enemies in Metropolis, some who the public might believe were stupid enough to smear us like this, and maybe that's what Lex was banking upon: to be the saviour who rose out of the ashes of Metropolis, after the Daily Planet's irresponsible rabble-rousing had prompted this kind of backlash.

So this was why they were staring at me.

Where was Jimmy when I needed him?

There was a shuffling of feet, and I think some toes were trodden on. Then Perry appeared in front of me. He clapped his heavy hands on my shoulders: a sudden pain cracked through my injured shoulder and I grunted but held his gaze.

"You did your best, kid," he said, "I believe it."

There was some dissent in the crowd: I could hear their whispering, like the storm that rolled out from the bay.

I flicked his hands away coolly and narrowed my eyes at the newsroom. "I'm doing my best," I said. "And don't call me 'kid'... Chief."

And when he nodded, that seemed to be enough for everybody else.

I collapsed into the seat at my desk, feeling more powerless than I wanted anybody to know. How many dead now? I wondered. How many injured?

Then, I looked up. "Chief!" I called out over the newsroom. He half-turned from where he was stood and looked at me. "If those 'Supermen'," I said, "claim to be fighting for us, this might be the only safe building in Metropolis. We need to start getting people in here and giving them shelter." It was the least we could do.

His lips seemed to turn half up, only for a moment, then he nodded, once, sharply. "OK," he shouted, and his voice carried through the newsroom, "I want all the interns out looking for casualties." He seemed to think for a moment, and then added, "And if you can get a doctor or two, well that won't hurt either."

This was the Daily Planet, shouldering its burden to the public.

And, with some of the guilt cleared from my head, I felt I had space to breath and to think.

Then Chloe and Kara came back.

A wave of still fell over the newsroom, and I understood why. They had loved "Supergirl" in the space where Kal-El had found fear and aversion: this one had spread her wings in protection around the city — until the moment they needed it most, when she disappeared. I had overheard their bitter mutterings.

And here she was: and she was just a girl, younger than most of the interns.

And here she was, striding over to me, of all people.

Oh, but they know each other, remember? Lane got the interview.

Lane has her fingers in a lot of pies.

Chloe was unnoticed behind her.

We went up to the roof, where we could talk with some guarantee that we wouldn't be overheard.

There was ash in the air, making it grate, and glow, and sting. A cloud of smoke billowed up from the fires, now consuming whole chunks of the city: glittering in the blackness, and red with the charred blood of ordinary people not living ordinary lives — not living at all.

And where was Lex? Lex was unconcious, tied to his desk, with his life in Jimmy Olsen's hands. What a fucking waste, Lex: you didn't even win.

"I think this is it," said Chloe, handing me a lead box. "Obviously I didn't want to test it on Kara to make sure."

I looked at it. Blue kryptonite: I hope this works.

Kara had stepped over to the edge of the Planet, searching the skies. She looked back over her shoulder to me, and said, "I have to go, Lois." And like Kal-El had, she seemed so small to me. Don't you know? I wanted to ask. Don't you know your kryptonite is like sunshine to them?

I stepped over and pulled her into me with my good arm, hugging her good-bye. "Look after yourself," I said.

She nodded. "You too." Then she stepped off the ledge and into the sky.

I fingered the box Chloe had handed me. Then I strode past her towards the stairwell.

"Where are you going?" said Chloe, starting after me.

I stopped and turned, holding the box up. "Nobody commissions a weapon unless they think they're gonna use it, Chlo. I'm going to end this now."

Chloe closed her eyes and breathed in. Then she stepped forward and said, "OK, I know there's nothing I can say to make you stop, but there is something I can do to help you." She caught my eye, and then grabbed my injured shoulder.

I groaned in pain as she gripped me — but then it wasn't me. It was her. She was the one moaning and clutching her own shoulder.

I touched mine with my other hand: no pain. I had full mobility back. Then I looked at her, now breathing almost normally again. "You didn't tell me," I accused. "You didn't tell me it hurt you — Chloe —"

"It'll wear off," she said, rubbing her shoulder. "And this isn't the time, Lois. I'm going to see what I can do, healing people who've been injured in the riots."

I looked at her: so ready to shoulder the burden of other people's pain. Everybody I loved was tripping over each other to sacrifice themselves — and I didn't want to lose any of them. I couldn't stand it.

"Fine," I said. "But we'll talk about this when it's over." If it's over. If I live.

This wasn't something I could do on the roof of the Daily Planet: I could spare us that one dignity. So I tripped down the stairs into the street, and ran, and I kept running until I reached one of the few wide open spaces there was in Metropolis: Centennial Park — untouched, for now.

Here I stopped. I was burning from my throat right down my lungs with the ash of the city and my own respiration. Then I called, because it was all I could do: "Bizarro! Superman!"

Shouting felt like running daggers down my throat, and I coughed.

No, I thought to myself. Lex wanted Clark on his side any way he could have him. And I grimaced, as I said, "Come here, Clark."

And I wondered if Kal-El could hear me.

Of course, he was always listening.

Just one came: one of Lex's Bizarro-soldiers. His eyes were blank and reflective, his face set and expressionless. He seemed almost more disturbing for being animated, his movements jerky, like some otherworldly puppet or clockwork toy.

I held up my press pass to him. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.

He just looked from the press pass to my face, but didn't walk towards me. I pointed to the logo on the pass, and the sign on his chest, and said, "Do you know who I am?"

I hope this works.

He just stood there. Even Kal-El had been responsive when I had first met him — unlike Clark, but not deathlike and passive.

Without the Phantom which had given Bizarro consciousness, were they just moving corpses? My skin crawled.

And would they obey me, bearing the sign they had been branded with?

"Get the others," I said.

He just stood there.

"Do you understand?" I said forcefully. "Bring them to me. Lex Luthor has been taken out. I am second in command."

He looked again at the pass, his face still blank as if he could not process information. Then he turned, and flew away.

I waited.

When he returned, two others were with him: a trifecta of strange imagery. I guessed the last two were locked in battle with Kal-El and Kara. I hoped they were, and I hoped they were losing.

"Kal-El," I whispered under my breath, "Kara, bring your Bizarros to Centennial park. I can take them out."

The three I had just stood there, watching me with those passive eyes. I wondered how creatures so empty could wreak so much destruction — but far be it from me to question Lex's master plan. I was just one of many who had to deal with the fallout.

But part of me was uneasy, afraid that they might turn at any moment, like a flat sea turned suddenly violent.

When Kal-El appeared, I didn't know what to think. He was beaten, but what was worse, he looked tired: I had never seen Clark tired, I had never seen Clark this weak. His opponent was behind him, and I was satisfied to see that he didn't look much better.

"Listen to me," I said, holding up my press pass. This fourth Bizarro lined up with the other three and Kal-El stepped away — he walked, not flew. That worried me.

It was a little while later, when I had spent more time trying to hide my unease from the voided gaze of the Bizarros, that Kara showed up with hers. Now I had all five. I held up the box Chloe had given me.

My heart was pounding, my blood on fire. I didn't know what would happen if this didn't work. I tried to swallow my misgivings, and they went down like a shard of glass.

I opened the box, closing my eyes in reflex.

When I opened them, all five were on the floor, not writhing, but clearly in pain. I breathed out, one shuddering sigh of relief. I looked over my shoulder at Kal-El and Kara, stood back at a safe distance. Kara had her arm under Kal-El's shoulder for support — the second display of affection between them that night, and it broke my heart.

We had won. We had to have won now.

Whatever happened with Lex, whatever Metropolis thought of me, of Kal-El, of the Daily Planet: it didn't matter, not yet.

It was clean-up. It was communicating with the police. It was finding out how to contain these Bizarro Supermen — they seemed dead to me already, but I couldn't stomach the idea of smashing their Clarklike faces in.

And I was tired.

Kara flew Kal-El above the clouds to where it was noon in the world, while dawn broke over Metropolis. I left Lex's soldiers with a task force from Belle Reve and Lex in the custody of the Met Police, and I went home.

The air in my apartment felt so sparse. I fell back against the door, deflating, sliding down until I was a heap on the floor, and then I put my head on my knees, eyes scrunched up.

I hadn't spoken to Chloe, but I thought she was OK: she had to be. She was my cousin, how could she not be fine?

Oh Clark, if you were here.

Would you put your arms around me? Would we cling to each other as the world spun around us? Would we finally say what we were both thinking?

I ached in every cell of my body, and the dark phlegm in my throat. I was so tired.

I was somehow in my bed when I woke, in an unlit room, at night. How long had I slept? When I saw Kal-El by the window, I realised he must have found me on the floor in my hall and carried me in here.

"Kal-El," I said, my voice hoarse. He turned to look at me as I cleared my throat, his face uninjured again and unscarred.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I smiled at him, and he came to sit next to me.

"You're OK," I said, reaching over and brushing his lip where it had been split earlier.

When I drew my hand away, he lifted his own fingers and touched them to his own lips, his eyes on mine. Dropping his hand, he nodded. "Everyone is OK," he said, and when he looked at me, I knew he meant Chloe too.

I had to close my eyes against the tears welling up from my gut, pressing my lips together and nodding. Then I breathed in, and opened my eyes again.

He smiled at me then, and then leaned over and brushed his fingers against my lips as I had brushed mine against his: experimenting with a touch. And, reflexively, I kissed them.

He looked up at my eyes then, putting his head on one side in the studious pose I would always associate with him. I caught my breath, and I knew it.

I touched my fingertips to his wrist, following the line of the muscle up to his elbow. He was watching me, studying me with those thick-lashed, dark eyes.

"Can you even feel this?" I said, thinking of his invulnerability.

The shadow of a smile passed across his face. "I can feel you," he said.

I put my fingers around his wrist and turned his hand over: it was so human.

He had strength in the tendons which ran down his fingers, strength which could level Metropolis, and yet here he was — brushing his fingertips against mine, making me think a butterfly was walking over my skin.

There was humanity in the Kryptonian. Or maybe Kryptonian in the human. Or maybe there was neither human nor Kryptonian. I had asked that question of his eyes that first time on the roof of my building: are you unknowable, or just unknown? And I wondered now if he had also asked it of mine.

And I knew now: he was not Clark as I had known him, but we were not so different.

My hand guided his, and the butterfly danced down the skin of my stomach. He met my gaze, and I felt my smile as he looked back to where his fingers rested against my abdomen. He leant over and, gently, pressed his mouth to my collarbone, to the hollow beside my neck.

And I knew. Blood rushed through my veins, setting every molecule on fire: bonds were breaking, and I didn't know what shape anything would be when they came back together.

And maybe, for now, it didn't matter.

He gave way when I pushed gently at his shoulder, falling back and looking up at me: did I do wrong? And I just put my head to one side, as he had so often his, and studied him.

My lips were dry, so dry that it tickled when I brushed them against his.

His were softer than I had imagined: invulnerable even to the weather.

And somehow, his fingers found their way to the scars on my back where Oliver had thrown me into the glass table.

My love life was always so complicated.

I made my choice then. We made our choice. And whether that choice was to be human, or Kryptonian, or both, or neither, I didn't care.

Not tonight.


	12. Clark Kent

Kal-El was gone when I woke up: rolling out of bed, I hit the floor like a stone.

The window to my room was opened, and I wondered if the bird had flown. But I know from birds, and I knew he'd come back if I called him. I went up to my rooftop, thinking how strange to meet him in the daytime — but I didn't have to call. He was already there, back to me.

The sky was clouded over with grey, and it looked like rain: it didn't matter now, the air had already stopped burning, the fallout was fell out. I realised, somewhere, that it had been two days now, and I knew today I had to pick up the pieces.

But not yet.

He turned to me before I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. The light was to his back now, casting his face in shadows, and I realised, even with Kal-El, that smile wasn't in his eyes.

"What's wrong?" I said, folding my arms against the cool and standing beside him, leaning back against the ledge.

"I was thinking," he said.

I nudged him with my elbow and raised an eyebrow. "Care to share?"

He pressed his lips together and let his eyes slide away from mine, first to the sky and then to the floor. "I was thinking —" he said. He looked back at me, and then looked away again. "I was thinking about — you."

I smiled, a little bit. "Me?"

He nodded, slowly. "And, Clark."

Was that the first time he'd ever said his name like that? I stared at him.

"You miss him," he said, and it was a fact.

"I miss him," I repeated, because I couldn't lie to Kal any more than he could lie to me.

He nodded, and I watched him. I watched the curve of his neck as the breeze brushed the hair lightly off it, and the shadow behind his jaw as he looked ahead, still thinking.

I unfolded my arms, and put my hand on his.

"Lois," he said, his voice low, "what am I?"

That was the question. I had been asking that question since the night he had turned up on my doorstep and put the fear of Krypton into me. He had also asked that question of me, struggling to define me from his point of view, until he had made me the default and tried to define himself from mine.

Why was I the default? Was he trying to carve out his definition through my eyes, or through Earth's eyes? Why is it that I'm not subject to Krypton's scrutinity?

But it wasn't just about points of view, I knew that, because Kal-El was like nothing on Earth or Krypton: Kara's like-humanity attested to that.

Or was he? If I could imagine that Kal-El existed separate from Clark, that Kal-El was a person unto his own right — could I believe his taciturnity had nothing to do with his being Kryptonian, that a human could be like him?

Was it me? Did I make him an alien? Or was it —?

If I could strip away the façade of what I thought was 'inhuman' about him, what would I find underneath? Maybe I would find that his thought processes followed the same track of logic, or illogic, rationale or irrationality as my own.

Or maybe not. Maybe I would find a tree of responses all programmed by Jor-El. And maybe it didn't matter either way: after all, I didn't question why I was the way I was.

I put my hand on his cheek, and gave the only answer I had: "You're Kal-El." And I felt like, in this moment, when we had witnessed the end of the world and come through into the dawn, that was all that mattered: we were who we were. It was all any of us had right now.

He turned his head away, and looked back at the city. There were large patches of blackness, of rubble, but the place thrummed with the same kind of optimistic energy that had always belonged to Metropolis.

"Clark Kent is Kal-El," he said, his voice low.

What riff was this now? His back was to me again, but I couldn't have read his expression anyway.

"If you had a choice," he said. He turned back to me and fixed me with those dark, dark eyes. "If you could choose between me and Clark —?"

A kind of fear pooled in my stomach, and I wondered how he could ask me that. I set my jaw, and looked away. "It's not my choice," I said with finality, echoing the words he had spoken to me on my rooftop in the night.

He nodded, slowly, as if he were turning it over in his head. "But you already chose," he said, eventually, his voice so low and yet ringing in my ears. "You chose the same way every time it came up."

And yes, I wanted to deny it: I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and tell him I wanted him more than Clark, kiss his neck and ask him what did it matter now anyway? — but I couldn't lie to him. It was a physical impossibility.

But why? Why was he asking me this? Why was he doing this? Why now?

I couldn't make the words come out today. My thoughts were scattered all in the air around me, non-linear, branching off into their own little thought trees which I couldn't follow down to the ends.

I cared for Kal-El in a way that was so like the way I had cared for Clark, and so different — as if the feelings were related to each other, as if they were entwined. There was overlap and differentiation, and somewhere in me it felt like it all came together as one singular mass of feeling. I couldn't understand it, I never had.

"Maybe," I said, putting my arms around myself.

Even I didn't know which way I would choose this time.

And he didn't seem hurt — just matter-of-fact — as he brushed his fingers down the side of my face and over my lips. And I understood that he was leaving.

Then just go, I wanted to say: I don't need you. I don't need you, and don't let the skylight hit you in the ass on the way out.

And also — you belong here.

"I want to be whole," he said.

I just pressed my lips together, and nodded. We all wanted to be whole, whole people and containing all of our own experiences. Kal-El didn't have that, because of what Jor-El had done to him, so how could I stop him going? We were all any of us had — Kal-El needed himself.

"OK," I said, and my voice was terser than I had expected.

And when I looked back he was gone.

The Daily Planet was still standing when I reached there. Still standing, and thrumming with people. I felt dazed, as I walked through the building up to my floor, and realised that the people who had been "against" me all worked alongside the people who had been "with" me: all working, and bickering, and rubbing along to put the place back together.

I don't know why I had expected to see Chloe there, but I wasn't wrong. She was smiling, in my seat, talking to Jimmy.

"Hey!" she said, when she saw me, and grabbed me, pulling me into a tight hug. "God Lois," she said into my ear, sounding choked, "I was so afraid I wouldn't see you again."

I caught Jimmy's eye over her shoulder, and he smiled. "You did a good job," he said.

I just closed my eyes, and buried my face in Chloe's hair — because there were tears in my eyes, and I didn't want anybody to know that Lois Lane knew how to cry.

"Don't worry," Chloe said, as I perched on the edge of my desk, "I didn't take your place — just pitched in a little while you were AWOL."

I nodded, surveying the newsroom.

"Are you OK?" said Jimmy, and when I caught his eye I saw how concerned he was, "You just seem — I mean, compared to usual."

"Just a little shellshocked," I said, feeling numb to my bones, "I'll be fine." He nodded, tentatively, and exchanged a glance with Chloe.

"I thought you'd want to know," she said, looking over at me, "Perry wanted to see you when you were — when you came in."

Oh, Perry. I owed Perry so much: an explanation was the least I could give him. "OK," I said, pushing myself off the desk, "OK." And I didn't have to look back over my shoulder again to know their faces were wrought with worry.

Perry put a large scotch down on the desk as I closed the door behind me, and pushed it over towards me. I looked from the glass to him as I sat in the seat across, and he gave me a look with so much force I was almost afraid to refuse. That was all the excuse I needed. I had been strong for so long.

"I don't know what you did," and I wondered if I was going crazy, because his rough voice seemed almost tender. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk, and repeated, "I don't know what you did. I don't know what you've been doing. But whatever it is, whatever your connection to 'Superman' or Lex Luthor," he sighed, "I don't want to know."

I looked at him, surprised, and he licked his lips. "If you can't print it," he said, "I don't need to hear it. But Lois —" and here he gave the kind of look a father would give his daughter, a look I hadn't seen now in a long, long time, "if you ever want to talk."

"I just need a little time," I said, thinking my voice sounded tired, "I just need to get back into a routine and I'll be fine."

But inside I was starting to wonder.

After all this, after all we'd done: we were back where we started. Jimmy, Kara, Chloe, Kal-El: we had struggled for so long and so hard, and now, what? Lex was going to get off again and we'd have to start all over again.

I felt like I was losing my grip on whatever purpose I thought my life had had.

And from the look on Perry's face, I don't think I was hiding it too well.

"At ease," he said, gently. And then, without a hint of irony, "They should give you a medal, kid."

I felt my lips twitch, "I'll settle for a Pulitzer, Chief."

It was a while before things started to get better. Kal-El never came back, and I never expected him to, but I spend my nights out of habit on one rooftop or another, staring up into the everlasting blackness of space, following those branches of thought down to their inevitable conclusions.

Chloe moved into my apartment. She said it was to save money, but I knew she was worried about me. They all were, and I felt bad about that — but I needed to work it out myself.

Besides, she and Kara became unlikely friends. I would hear them in the kitchen, commiserating about Jimmy, or about me — leaning my head up against the door, not wanting to eavesdrop but not wanting to go in, and, sometimes, just smiling to know they were there.

And it was easier at work. Many of Burns's ilk quit, or retired, or shut up, and that was OK by me. I kept my stories small for now, and that was OK by everybody else.

I was trying to find my fire again. I knew it was deep inside me somewhere: one day I would get up ready to save the world all over again — I was starting to understand why. It was a kind of "why" I think Clark would have approved of: don't think about it too abstractly, Lois. It's not about duality. It's not about us vs Lex. It's about each individual person we saved together, and everything we did to try to make it better or stop it getting worse.

I just needed time to let it sink in.

And the nightmares stopped, after a while: the nightmares where I killed Kal-El instead of Bizarro, where I killed Clark; the nightmares where I was surrounded by them and couldn't tell the difference. All the nightmares stopped, but still I kept taking my sleeping pills.

"I wanted to thank you for your help," I remember saying to the dream Kal-El once, and he smiled — or was it Clark?

Maybe it was both, all at once.

I had time. Lex was commited to Belle Reve at least until strings were pulled and false diagnoses of recovery given, and I can't say I didn't feel a little sorry for him. Just a little.

Kara kept saving the world, one cat up a tree, one pram lost in traffic, one person at a time. People were wary of her, and in love with her all at the same time. And Superman? "Good riddance."

I tried to fight that attitude, but part of me wondered if it mattered — if Clark was gone, and Kal-El was gone, and everyone else who looked like either of them was Bizarro, maybe the public should fear and distrust them. Still, it felt wrong.

We rebuilt the city better than before. They said we all came together but we, we journalists had the confidence this time over and the standing to question and criticise — to point out that some people were being rescued later than others, and to ask why. And I might have been keeping my stories small, but I made each and every one of them count.

And then —

And then he came back.

I didn't quite recognise him at first: he seemed smaller, unassuming, as he stood over my desk. I thought he was an intern, in those large, thick glasses — until I looked again, looked at him right in the clear, blue eyes.

"Lois," he said.

I dropped my pen, and just heard it clatter to the floor over the din of the newsroom.

"I'm not sure how to explain," he said, up on the roof with the wind whipping up around us. I wanted to stop time, just for a while, while I gathered my thoughts.

I never believed this would happen. Never — never hoped.

"What Jor-El did to me —" he started, and then pressed his lips together and looked away again. "What he tried to do, tried to make me —"

He breathed out, frustration running all through him.

"I never thought I'd see you again," I said, trying to keep my voice free of accusation. His lip twitched, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he wanted to close the space between us, and I sort of wanted it too, but he didn't.

"What's up with the glasses?" I said, keeping this conversation safe, giving us time to order our thoughts.

He smiled a little. "Everybody I meet is afraid of me," he said, "the glasses — people don't look at me twice when they see me coming down the street."

I wanted to apologise for that, but it didn't come out.

We stood there in silence for a long time, both trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, how to work this out.

Eventually, he started talking about something that felt kind of irrelevant, and yet not, not looking at me.

"I used to hate thinking of myself as an alien," he said, almost conversationally, as if it didn't matter. "The only Kryptonians I ever met were —" he paused, and then said quietly, "well, you've met Jor-El."

I nodded, wanting to talk but having no words, and thinking there was more he wanted to say anyway.

"I thought it was my destiny," and he put an ironic stress on the word, "to be like that — I thought all Kryptonians were the same, that our ideals, our morals could somehow be genetic. And I wanted, I wanted to be like you, all of you humans — because humans weren't all the same, the morals of humans weren't tied to their genetics, humans were somehow better than me just because they were human."

He sighed, "I was brought up as a human, but I wasn't one. And it felt like, like there were two sides to me, warring it out."

"Clark Kent and Kal-El," I said, almost to myself, and he looked up at me sharply. "And you didn't trust the alien in you." Why should he? I mean, of course we idolised being human in human society.

"I wanted to bury him deep, deep inside," he said, "I wanted to be human, walk among you, belong to your society and —" he paused, carefully, turning things over in his head as if he were understanding them for the first time as I was understanding them for the first time.

"It's hard to explain," he said eventually. "But I guess — every time somebody found out that I was a Kryptonian, they looked at me differently. Before she knew about me, Lana hated all aliens — and I was the exception, I wasn't like the others, she knew me. And Chloe," he bowed his head, "well Chloe was a good friend, but it felt like I became something else — a 'hero', a good person just because I was Kryptonian and not because of who I was. And I didn't feel that —"

I closed my eyes. Clark had been carrying these neuroses with him all of his life, and now he could talk.

"I never thought," he said, carefully, "that somebody could accept an alien as a person — like —" he caught my eye, and I looked away.

"Why did you go?" I said. I wanted to hit him for leaving me in the first place. I wanted to grab him and scream in his ear: do you know how much I missed you, Clark? Do you know?

"To fulfill my destiny," he said, without irony this time.

And somehow it made sense to me: knowing that Jor-El had split Clark in two as much as we had, but discarded the human rather than the alien. What was Kal-El? Kal-El was part of a whole. Clark Kent was part of a whole. And now?

"You're a whole person," I said, echoing his words from earlier. "How did you —?"

"I went back to the Fortress," he said. "And I ... fought ... with Jor-El. But I was stronger then than I was when I left Smallville, and when you found me there before. I was stronger because..." he trailed off, and looked away, and my heart burnt.

Clark was never really gone. I hadn't lost him. He hadn't been dead.

And neither was Kal-El. Kal-El was here, Clark was here: not one side I had known in Smallville, or the other I had known in Metropolis, or even both. There was no choice. He was a whole person, now, one I knew and understood, and —

I'm not much of a dualist.


	13. Lane & Kent

I don't want to be alone anymore.

Not _alone_ alone: I am surrounded by people. I mean alone, inside myself. I don't want to be the only person there.

Nobody ever really found out quite what I did on "Ash Tuesday" — yeah, it was a Tuesday. That almost surprised me. Somewhere I stopped keeping track of days of the week and I didn't even notice, but for most people that day was normal.

A lot of them used up their last normal day then, thanks to Lex.

After Metropolis pulled itself together, we had a memorial in Centennial Park. I was asked to speak: nobody knew what I had done, but my name was on a thousand lips anyway. I declined. How could I speak for the people who died that night? I didn't even know if they knew they were dead.

I went, though, to see Kara say her piece — and to see the General.

He gave me the strangest look, filled with the cold aloofness with which he had handled his fatherhood. My father was like a stone. When I was younger, I beat my fists till they were bloody on the rock around his heart, but it never cracked. Now, when he looked at me, I thought I saw a chink — and through that chink, maybe pride. Maybe not.

It's just the way he is.

He put his hand on my shoulder, and I understood that he loved me.

Clark went as well, bespectacled and dressed in funeral attire. Nobody asked him — Superman — to speak. I don't think it hurt him. At least, it didn't hurt him as much as the looks his rescuees gave him now.

Fear. Blame.

Why were people casting about for a scapegoat? We all knew who had engineered this. We all know whose hands the blood was on.

Lex had supporters, even now. Yes, fewer, and yes, ostracised — but they were out there.

"Humanity," said Clark to me, "is capable of such great and such disgusting things."

"Where is the great?" I said, absent-mindedly. He just looked at me.

And I looked at him.

"Maybe 'humanity' isn't the right word," I said. He smiled.

And so did I.

It's not true, what they tell you about how many muscles it takes to smile and to frown. It's not true, but damn it felt good to smile then.

Maybe it was time for me to throw caution to the wind, with the ashes of all the people we couldn't save. Maybe it was time for me to start chipping away at the rock around my own heart. The way Clark glanced at me, the softness of his eyes behind their lenses, reminded me how much I used to want to fight.

But hell if I was going to wear anything like that when I took up my shield again.

"It's a ... change," he said in awkward explanation, and shifted his weight. I raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"It's very colourful," I said, eventually.

We were stood on the rooftop of the Daily Planet, with the freshness of early evening pressed against our skin. I was wearing heels for the first time in months, and Clark was wearing the suit which would soon be synonymous with the word 'justice'.

"It's," he paused, looking over the skyline, "bright, so people can see me coming."

I folded my arms. Clark wanted so badly to earn back the people's trust.

Besides, it was kind of ... sexy. Not that I'd say.

Even now, I wouldn't say. I had kept these feelings inside for so long that it frightened me how much power there was in them. I had kept them, hidden, until they were so large I had to wonder — like a ship in a wine bottle — how to get them out without breaking something.

But the way Clark looked at me — the way Kal-El had been — I thought I was going to burn up from wondering, what if?

He was braver than me.

He faced down Perry White, who attributed that nagging familiarity to the fact that he met Clark in his teens, and asked about calling in an old favour.

Perry asked me to babysit him — although I didn't put it like that when I told Clark.

And I wasn't sure how to respond, when he asked me out: how could he? After everything we'd done, we'd had to do, how could he comprehend doing something so mundane as dating?

But he took me out, took me to a quiet restaurant, and talked to me all night.

We talked about ordinary things: we complained that the coffee machine in the staff room was always on the fritz; we discussed his mother's latest political manoeuvrings; we tried to work out what the situation between Kara, Chloe and poor Jimmy was. He talked to me, and made me laugh, and bicker, and burn where my heart was. I wondered how I ever lived without any part of this.

And somehow we ended up on my sofa, my feet in his lap, watching some old film but not really paying attention.

"You know," he said, eventually, "when you're thinking really hard, you get this sort of frown on your face, and press your lips together."

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow, "Before you say it, Perry gives me fifteen cents a word for editorials. My thoughts are worth a lot more than a penny."

He grinned, "Oh," he said, "is that why they're always so overwri—"

I raised my finger threateningly, "You don't want to finish that sentence," I said.

He smiled at me, and then gently took my hand and kissed my outstretched finger. And it felt like time had shifted gears.

"What were you thinking about?" he said.

I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, and then cleared my throat. "How easy this is," I said, after a moment, and then narrowed my eyes, "too easy."

"Lois," he said, and looked intensely at me, "I'm still here. You haven't lost anybody," and I knew what he was getting at.

"We're at war," I said, and he knew what I was getting at.

"We are," he said, "and we always will be," always screaming on behalf of those without voices, fighting not just people but ideas, shadow boxing in the dark, I knew. "We'll always be at war," he said, "but that doesn't mean things always have to be difficult."

He brushed his fingers lightly over my hair, tucking the strays behind my ear and studying my face. "Lois," he said, "one thing I learned ... just because you're a hero doesn't mean you can't be happy. It doesn't mean you can't have friends, or date, or —" he paused, and his lips twitched here, "well, you know."

He nodded, almost as if to himself, and then looked me in the eye again, "You taught me that."

"I'm not a hero," I said seriously.

He just grinned. "You look like one," he said.

Chloe resolved herself to get into med school. I just shook my head. We never did have that talk about her powers — I think somewhere between the fifth and the sixth time I risked my own life, I realised I was in no position to tell anybody else what to do with theirs.

And, you know, there's a funny thing about the end of the world: afterwards, the Earth keeps spinning. The ashes settled. The people mourned. And we all found a new kind of normalcy, a routine.

But everything was different.

The desolation which followed our almost Pyrrhic victory passed, and dawn broke across my soul. When I looked at the sky now, it shone, burning with the sunlight which gave Clark and Kara their strength.

And I realised Clark was right. We would always fight — but each new day was an opportunity to take new ground, to make things just a little better. Every opportunity for action was an opportunity to take the action which would make somebody a little less beaten down, a little happier, a little stronger, a little more able to fight for themselves.

I got my hope back.

And —

"I love you," I found myself whispering into the wind one night, as the Daily Planet globe creaked and turned behind me.

I wasn't sure where Clark was, patrolling, saving somebody else's life — but where ever it was, whatever he was doing, I think he heard me and felt stronger. I think he heard me, and I think he whispered it back.

And I think —

I think I'm not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/612078882142699520/eqXnQN20) on tumblr.


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